Shady Sands Confidential
by NihilNovo
Summary: It's been six years since Hoover Dam. The Mojave was good for the NCR. It brought in water, power, and more than a little greed. The Mojave was good to Hank Redstone as well-he went from a poor farmboy to a war hero to a well-off private eye. But he's about to find out that everything, and everyone, has a price. Some just never get it. They don't call it Shady Sands for nothing.
1. Matrimonial Work

**Shady Sands Confidential**

_"Behind every great fortune, there lies a crime." __-Balzac_

To Alice

* * *

**1. Matrimonial Work**

In the first photo, the man was naked, but the ghoulette was not. By the third, they were both in bed. Pedro was staring at the second photo.

He would have been crying, had his tear ducts still worked. Instead, he was making soft croaking noises through his half-rotten vocal cords as he tried to express his emotions over his wife's betrayal.

The ghoul brushed his face. Two scabs peeled off his nose, one landing on the desk, the other between the words "Matrimonial Work" on a contract the man across from him was holding.

The other man noticed it and flicked one of the scabs into a wastebasket beside the bookshelf behind him. Never taking his eyes off the ghoul, he withdrew a cigarette and an ornately engraved silver lighter from a breast pocket, then a handkerchief to wipe down the lacquered rosewood surface. He looked cool and brisk in a white linen suit, despite the heat.

The ghoul rose up from his chair, and sent his fist into the drywall, narrowly missing a photo of the man sitting across from him ushering Lana Davis through a crowd of journalists. Then his legs buckled, his knees landing on the carpet, and he began to gnaw on the blinds.

"Alright, enough is enough. You can't eat the blinds, I just had them installed on Wednesday."

Ghoul cases were always the worst.

Pedro began to rise to his feet, slowly. The man reached across the desk and gave him a hand. Then he turned around and poured a shot of cheap whiskey. "Down the hatch."

The ghoul stared at his reflection in the glass. Then he drained it, quickly, sinking back into the chair and resuming his quiet half-croaking. "She's just no good." He sounded a little better now.

"What can I tell ya, kid? You're right. You're right, you're right, and you're right."

"We've been together for eighty years, now. Eighty years, Hank! -and she throws it all away-all away for that two-timing little smoothskin, Rollo- Rollo-"

"Rollo Tomasi."

"Rollo Tomasi. Little bastard. I think I'll kill him. And her."

Hank heard the next client before he saw her.

* * *

The lady's voice was matronly, mixed with a hint of deliberate condescension.

"-I was hoping Mr. Redstone could see to this personally-"

Eddie, Hank's assistant, replied, almost in the manner of someone comforting the bereaved.

"-If you'll allow us to complete our preliminary questioning, by then he'll be free."

There was the sound of another moan from the office, then a shattering of glass. Eddie could sense her edginess seeping under the door.

* * *

Pedro was leaning over the desk now, his smell penetrating the half jar of menthol rub Hank had put under his nostrils before the appointment.

"They don't kill a guy for that." His breath made the menthol rub curl up in a ball and hide somewhere north of the detective's forehead.

"Oh, they don't?"

"Not for your wife. That's the unwritten law."

Hank tried to fight back a chuckle. "I'll try to tell you the unwritten law, rotface. You got to be a somebody to kill anybody and get away with it. You think you got that kind of dough, that kind of class?"

He shrank back a little. "...no..."

"You bet your ass you don't. You can't even pay me off."

This seemed to upset the ghoul a little more. "I'll pay the rest the next trip-we only caught fourteen nightstalkers around Redding, and you know they don't pay you the same for nightstalkers as they do deathclaws or tunnelers-"

Hank began to ease him out of the office. "Forget it, I only mentioned it to illustrate a point..."

* * *

They walked past Eddie, who was now pointedly avoiding his gaze, and a portly, overstuffed woman who was staring at Hank's arm around the shoulders of a ghoul as if he had been the one pulling a Rollo. He tried to keep up a smile.

"Of course I'll take care of the watch. What kind of guy do you think I am?"

"Thanks, Mr. Redstone. I'll be sure to bring the rest of the money next time."

"Call me Hank. Careful riding home, Pedro." Hank shut the door and stopped smiling. Then he turned around and started smiling again. Eddie arose.

"Mrs. Inkay, may I present Mr. Redstone?"

He walked over to her and put on his best look of sympathy. "How do you do, Mrs. Inkay?"

"Mr. Redstone..."

"Now, Mrs. Inkay, what appears to be the problem?"

She held her breath. The revelation wasn't easy for her. "My husband, I believe, is seeing another woman."

Hank made his face look mildly shocked, then turned to his partner for confirmation.

"No, really?"

She didn't catch on. "I'm afraid so."

"I am sorry." Hank pulled his chair next to hers. Eddie cracked a knuckle. Hank shot him an irritated glance.

"Can't we talk about this alone, Mr. Redstone?"

"I'm afraid not, Mrs. Inkay. Eddie is my operative and at some point he's going to have to assist me. I can't do everything myself."

"Of course not."

"Now-what makes you certain he's involved with someone?" She hesitated. Later, Hank would realize this question had made her very nervous.

"-a wife can tell."

He sighed. "Mrs. Inkay, do you love your husband?"

She was a little shocked, then indignant. "Of course."

"Then go home and forget about it."

"-but-"

Hank stared intently at her. "Mrs. Inkay, have you ever heard the expression, let sleeping dogs lie? You're better off not knowing."

She looked anxious for a second. "But I have to know." Her intensity was genuine. Hank looked to Eddie.

"All right, what's your husband's first name?"

"Charles. Charles Inkay."

Hank, surprised: "Natural Resources?"

She nodded, almost shyly. He began to casually but carefully check the details of her attire-Raoul Tejada earrings, a Vault City silver-inlaid Pip-Boy.

"He's the Chief Scientist."

Eddie interjected, a little too eagerly. "Chief Scientist?"

Hank gave him a shut-the-hell-up look. "This type of investigation can be hard on your pocketbook, Mrs. Inkay. It takes time."

"Money doesn't matter to me, Mr. Redstone."

He sighed again. "Very well. We'll see what we can do. Eddie, draw up one of our standard contracts."

* * *

The map behind the speaker was nearly as tall as he was.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for attending this council meeting today. Our first speaker is the esteemed Senior Senator from the Mojave, Cassandra Moore."

"Thank you, Councilman Phillips. Fellow citizens, when we won the war in the Mojave six years ago, we won because of sheer damn luck. The Legion had us outnumbered, and dare I say outmaneuvered as well. Our number one difficulty was keeping all those troops fed. Today, you can walk out that door, turn right, and in two days end up smack in the middle of a wasteland. Now you can ride through it, you can mine it, but you can't farm it and you can't graze your brahmin on it. Remember-we live in the fertile lands of California, but the citizens of the Mojave live right on the edge of a moonscape. New Vegas is a wasteland community. Without more Floramin, the dust will rise up and swallow the Mojave as though we never had won it!"

Hank had to admit, she knew the number one rule of public speaking: talk loud.

"The Val Verde can save us from that, and I respectfully suggest that eighteen and one half million caps is a fair price to pay, so that the blood we spilled for the Mojave may return as the bounty of the earth."

The amalgam of farmers, businessmen, and NCR officials around Hank began to cheer. The councilman pounded a gavel, shushing them.

"Thank you, Senator Moore. Let's hear from the departments again. I suppose we better take Natural Resources first. Mr. Inkay?"

Hank sat up and put down his newspaper.

Charles Inkay walked, languidly, to the huge map. He was a slender, grey-haired man, who wore glasses yet moved with surprising fluidity. Hank remembered that he was sixty-two this year. The scientist turned to a smaller, younger assistant, and nodded. The assistant proceeded to turn the overleaf on the map.

"In case you've forgotten, gentlemen, over five hundred lives were lost when the containment field at Von Metzger Field failed. Core samples have shown that beneath the Val Verde bedrock is shale similar to the permeable Westin Hills shale in the Metzger disaster. It couldn't withstand that kind of corrosion."

He turned over another overleaf.

"Now you propose yet another dirt-banked containment field with slopes of two and a half to one, one hundred and twelve feet high and a twelve thousand acre fermentation surface. Well, it won't hold. I won't build it. It's that simple." And then, slowly, enunciating each syllable: "I am not making the same mistake twice. Thank you, gentlemen."

Charles Inkay left the podium and sat down. He looked past where Hank was sitting, and his expression clouded. Hank heard whoops and hollers from the rear of the chambers. As he turned around, he saw a red-faced ex-Legionnaire leading a pack of children.

The councilman banged his gavel, to no avail. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" He turned to the bailiff. "Get those goddamned runts out of here!"

The bailiff unsheathed an electric prod. The Legion man was defiant. "Tell me where to take them! You don't have an answer for that so quick, do you?"

Hank could hear and smell the prod as it traced its way across unarmored skin. But the Legion man was unfazed. "You steal the water from the Colorado, poison the soil, starve our children-who's paying you to do that, Mr. Inkay, that's what I want to know!"

* * *

A riverbed, green.

Hank remembered it being dry yellow, like the color of a dessicated corpse, when he had first crossed the bridge eight summers ago. He could almost hear the parade beat, one, two, one, two, the sergeant smiling at them for the first time since Week One of Basic Training.

The sergeant had been the first to die. A Legion spear pit took him three miles south of Nipton.

Sweat got in his eyes. He could barely make out a gray-haired figure standing in the middle of the field of green, stooped over. The binoculars gave him a better angle, but not by much.

A farmboy riding a brahmin began to make its way through the riverbed. Inkay stood, wiped his trousers, and waved. Hank's trigger finger involuntarily twitched as the boy returned the wave with the Legion salute.

The Chief Scientist appeared not to care. He walked closer to the boy and began to speak. The boy made a few pointing movements. Inkay took out his pip-boy and fiddled with a few dials.

Then it was over. The most exciting thing to have happened in the past five hours. One of the heads on the brahmin yawned as it sauntered away, tail idly chasing a small bloatfly. Inkay climbed on his electric bike and began to navigate it out of the riverbed.

Hank looked at his pocketwatch, and followed Inkay to the next riverbank.

* * *

There was water flowing here. Hank was surprised at how much that could change the landscape. Not the sight, but the sound-the buzz of a bloatfly, the bubbling of a creek. Still nothing compared to the distant roar of the dam spillways, of course, but it was powerful nonetheless-a constant reminder that the Earth was still alive, and that he was still alive to hear it.

But in spite of the noise, the old man was nowhere to be seen. The small streaks of moving water made it difficult to spot a movement in the bushes. Hank could see the bike, though, neatly propped up against a tree at the upper lip of the riverbank. He waited five minutes, then decided to take a risk.

Digging around in his coat pockets, he found Pedro's collateral, still ticking away merrily. Hank made a mental note to slip in an extra five hundred on the Mrs. Inkay's expense form. Checking both watches to make sure they had the same times, he placed Pedro's watch under the rear tire.

When he walked back to his own bike, he found someone had attached a flyer:

**THE NCR 'VISION FOR THE YEAR 2300' DEBATE**  
_Gen. LEE OLIVER vs. the Hon. TOM MCLAFFERTY_  
2:00 PM, Sept. 16th, 2287, The Gun Runners Building, Meeting Hall "Gabriel"

Hank crumpled it up, ditched it, and gunned the engine.

* * *

"Christ, Eddie, he was at the salt flats all night."

The hands of the crushed Tejada watch were stopped at 2:47. Hank dropped it into a drawer and sat down. Eddie came into the office holding a small tray, wet photos attached with clothes pins.

"So what you got?"

Eddie help up a photo, then another. The series showed Inkay arguing with another man outside a restaurant. None of the photos had the other man's face, although in two of them, a silver cane was visible.

Hank was annoyed. "This?"

"They got into a terrific argument outside Dusty's Cantina."

"What about?"

"I don't know-the traffic was pretty loud. I only heard one thing-Casa Door."

"Casa Door?"

Eddie shrugged. "Yeah."

Hank tossed down the photos in disgust. "Jesus Christ, Eddie, that's what you spent your day doing?"

"Look, you tell me to take pictures, I take pictures."

"Let me explain something to you, Ed-this business requires a certain finesse-"

The phone rang. Eddie handed Hank the receiver.

"H. H. Redstone and Associates."

The voice on the other end was very excited, speaking in quick, run-on sentences.

"Okay, slow down. Where are you? Hanlon Park? Rowboats? Alright, stay there. We'll be over in five minutes."

* * *

Eddie's knuckles were still gripping the oar much more tightly than he needed to.

"Who was that guy, anyway?"

"Old friend of mine."

"You make friends with those... those things?"

Hank knew Eddie was scared of mutants, especially ones with blue skin and mild schizophrenia. When he was ten, both of his parents had been "chomped in half," according to the newspaper article, by the time the Rangers had defused the hostage situation via gauss rifle.

Hank pulled out a palm-sized camera. "We found him on a patrol. Caesar's boys had chained him up and were having a grand old time trying to spell their names with branding irons on his chest. Started screaming in Latin as soon as he saw us. Got every Legionnaire in earshot staring at him, then we opened fire."

"Huh. Didn't know they were smart like that."

Hank shrugged. "He's not all there though." Then he raised the camera. "Let's see a big smile, pal."

Behind Eddie, Charles Inkay and a striking raven-haired girl in a summer print dress drifted by in a rowboat. Hank snapped a photo just as she fed Inkay a banana yucca fruit.

* * *

They followed the lovers to a small apartment overlooking the valley where the defeated Legion had settled. The bluish smoke from dinner campfires mixed with the setting sun to form a soft purple haze in the air. Hank's mouth watered a little. He had picked up a taste for Legion food in the Mojave, since it was usually better than the endless corn and beans the NCR fed its own troopers.

They climbed on the roof of an adjoining building, tiptoed, then crawled the last fifteen feet. Eddie held onto Hank's legs as he dropped his upper body over the edge. Hanging upside down, he peeked the camera just below the top of the window and peered through the viewfinder.

Sure enough, the Chief and the girl were sitting together on the couch. The evening light was feeble, though, so he couldn't quite make out whether they had undressed. But it was still two people in a bedroom. Hank snapped a few more photos, then coughed twice to signal Eddie to haul him up.

Just as Hank rolled onto the roof, he and Eddie heard the door open below them.

"Who's there?" It was the girl. Sharp ears, Hank thought. Then they heard the door close and climbed off the roof.

* * *

The barber had been the first to notice the headline.

**Department of Natural Resources Blows Fuse Over Chief's Use of Funds for Palatine Hill Love Nest**

Below was a heart-shaped photo of Charles Inkay and the girl sitting on a couch together. Next to the photo, a smaller column:

_Henry Redstone Hired By Suspicious Spouse_

"When you get so much publicity, after a while you must get blase about it."

A slight smile came to Hank's face.

"Face it. You're practically a movie star."

Behind them, a few of the waiting customers were engaged in an animated conversation. Through the buzzing of the razor, Hank could hear barely hear the words. "They're going to start rationing food again." "Only for those folks down in the shanties." "You're not going to be able to buy more than three loaves of bread per day." "They should just move all those damn Legion slavers out to the Rio Grande." A loud murmur of agreement arose at the last statement.

"Well, Maury, maybe next time you can find a girl pretty enough to be on the front page." The barber responded with a belly laugh.

A fat, slightly balding man sitting next to Hank turned the page on his copy of the paper.

"Fool's names and fool's faces..."

Hank sat up and turned to face the other customer. "What's that, pal?"

"Nothing-you got a hell of a way to make a living."

"Oh? And what do you do to make ends meet?"

The fat man was smug. "Mortgage department, First Republic Bank."

Hank laughed.

"Tell me, how many people a week do you foreclose on?"

"We don't publish a record in the newspaper, I can tell you that."

"Neither do I."

"No, you have your press agent do it."

Hank stood up. Maury, a little concerned, grabbed ahold of the barber sheet around Hank's neck.

"Maury, who is this guy? He a regular?"

The barber gently pulled on the sheet. "Take it easy, Hank."

Hank ignored him. "Look, pal-I make an honest living. People don't come to me unless they're miserable. I help them out of a desperate situation. I don't kick them out of their homes like you bums at the bank."

The other customer turned around, pretending not to hear.

Maury put a hand on Hank's shoulder. "Relax, buddy."

"If you've got a problem, Mister First Republic, maybe we can go outside and talk it over-"

The fat man turned around and began to shrink back into his chair.

"Hey, c'mon, Hank. Sit down. Here's a joke. Real funny-you hear about the fella that goes to his friend and says, 'What can I do? I'm tired of screwin' my wife?' and his friend says 'Well why don't you do what the Khans do?'"

Hank allowed himself to be dragged back to his chair. "I don't know how that got in the paper as a matter of fact-it surprised me, it was so quick. I make an honest living."

"'Course you do."

"An honest living."

"So anyway, he says, 'why don't you do what the Khans do?'"

* * *

Hank burst through the front door of his office, a huge grin on his face.

"Eddie! Eddie, ya gotta hear this-"

Eddie came out of the darkroom.

"-so there's this fella who's tired of screwing his wife-"

"Hank, listen-"

"Shut up, Eddie, you're always in such a hurry-and his friend says why don't you do what the Khans do? His friend says the Khans, they screw for a while-just listen a second, Eddie-"

A stunning green-eyed redhead appeared through the door to Hank's office, out of his sight. A small, white-haired, bespectacled man followed. They continued listening.

"-and then they stop and they draw some funny stick figures in the ground, and then they screw some more and they stop and inhale some Jet and they go back, screw some more and they stop and contemplate the Moon or something, and it makes it more exciting. So this other guy, goes home to screw his wife, and after a while, he says 'Honey, excuse me for a moment', and he goes and reads a magazine, and he goes back and screws some more and he goes and has a cigarette, and then he goes back and by this time his wife is getting pretty pissed off. So he screws some more, and then he gets up to look at the moon, and his wife says, 'Honey, what are you doing? You're screwing just like a Khan.'"

Hank hung on to Eddie's desk, bent over in laughter as he turned to head into his office. He saw the two and awkwardly tried to compose himself, his cheeks turning a bright shade of red. The little white-haired man winced. Eddie flashed a painful grin. The young woman gave him a few seconds, then fixed him with a polite but icy stare.

"Mr. Redstone?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know me?"

"-well-" Hank tried to fake a smile, then thought the better of it. "-I would have remembered."

"Have we ever met?"

"Well, no."

"Never?"

"Never."

"That's what I thought. You see, I'm Mrs. Evelyn Inkay - you know, Mr. Inkay's wife."

Hank blinked.

"Not that Inkay?"

"Yes, that Inkay, Mr. Redstone. And since you agree that we've never met, you must also agree that I haven't hired you to do anything-certainly not spy on my husband."

She began to walk out the door. "I see you like publicity, Mr. Redstone. Well, you're certainly going to get it-"

"Now, wait a minute, Mrs. Inkay..." Hank rushed to the door and grabbed the handle. "-there's some misunderstanding here. It's not going to do any good to get tough with me-"

"I don't get tough with anybody, Mr. Redstone." She flashed a cold smile. "My lawyer does."

Evelyn took Hank's hand and moved it off the handle, then opened the door. Hank stood there, dumbfounded. He was interrupted by a firm tap on the shoulder from the white-haired man.

"Here's something for you-"

The lawyer handed Hank a thick sheaf of papers-a summons and complaint. Evelyn walked out of the office.

The lawyer continued, pleasantly, "-I suppose we'll be hearing from your attorney soon."

Redstone stared down at the papers in his hand.


	2. Sorry Won't Cut It

**2. Sorry Won't Cut It**

Click. Pull lever up.

"Red!"

Pull bolt back. The round was indented, a misfire.

"Red! Red! Where the fuck are you!"

Extract round. Careful with the fingers. Slide in five fresh cartridges. Quick count-palming the pouch, weighing it. Empty.

"Red! Oh God, is this my own blood? I'm bleeding, man, I'm hurt bad. Help me, Red!"

Raise rifle. Freeze frame: a two-man sniper team, deployed as overwatch for an infantry position that no longer exists. One man lies wounded, slumped against a rock, a perfect target. Baiting, tormenting the other man.

His partner-behind a few scraggly rocks piled around a secondary foxhole. Primary foxhole-abandoned. Both foxholes slightly behind a ridgeline. Peek over the edge-a symphony of calibers and screams. The tune, all wrong-far too many enemy calibers, far too many friendly men crying out for God, mother, or water.

Or for a friend.

A wind came, bearing aloft pale yellow sand kicked up by explosions, and the garlic-and-onions stink of exploded ordnance.

"Red! Please. Please. Don't do this. Don't let them get to me. Red. Get me home. Get me someplace-AAHHHHH-my legs!"

Now one-and-a half men.

Rest stock against shoulder. Lift receiver, flush against the cheek. Place scope two inches from eye socket, to prevent the recoil from gouging out the eyeball. Target, front, two-fifty. Squeeze.

Lift bolt. Pull back. Eject shell. Push forward. Check target.

A work of art. Canvas: desert sand. Paintbrush: two-thousand eight-hundred and twenty pounds of muzzle energy concentrated in a thirty-cal round. Paint: the human torso.

Three more Legionnaires appear behind him. Feathers glued to gleaming motorcycle helmets, football pads painted mauve. They disappear behind a small set of boulders. Two men emerge with machetes, fanning out.

"Red." Almost a whisper now, the breathing ragged. "Red, I can see them coming. They're gonna cut me up, do you know that? Red. Please!"

Watch the point of origin for the covering man. The black snub nose of a 12.7mm submachine gun peeks over a rock. Then a face. Squeeze. A flash of pink mist.

Then, quick, cycle action, eject cartridge. No time to check target. Next man, caught in the open, one shot. Pull up, back, forward. Eyes to scope. The last man suddenly appears, impossibly huge, a giant, preparing to leap.

He's way too close. Drop rifle to hip, squeeze. A gaping hole punctuated by unevenly arranged ribs, wheezing, then silence. There's blood on the scope.

Poke head out of foxhole. The orchestra has reached its climax. A massive noise, warcries mixing with stampeding feet.

Cock. Reload. Peer through scope. See the machetes. See madness. A world turned red, black shapes swarming forward like beetles scuttling atop the bottom of a hellish ocean. A fresh company joining the battle. Coming straight for them.

His friend crawls closer, twenty yards out, a bear on his helmet. "Red. What are we going to do?" He's calm now, no more strength left for hysteria. Little puffs of dirt pick up around him, covering fire, now from an entire thirty-man submachinegun platoon, a fusillade.

The company is closing now. Two hundred yards out, almost to the first foxhole. Flip the switch. A gout of flame, almost like a volcano, ejecting hot chunks of flesh.

Not enough. Still eighty men left, swinging, surging, uncontrollable.

Lift stock. Press cheek to receiver. Scope two inches from eyeball.

Target, right, twenty yards.

Squeeze.

Now a one-man team.

Back at the camp, assigned to a new unit.

"Hank? I thought people called you Red." Shrug.

"Well, what's in a name, eh?"

* * *

Hank awoke on the floor again, as he usually did-clutching the bedsheets, sweat soaking through to the carpet underneath. He suddenly felt a strange urge to check the weapons in his closet. They were still there, of course, the dusty green of the Combat Armor next to his riot shotgun and his precision sniper rifle, the Shi infrared targeting system gleaming in the darkness. Stricken with the anxiety from his dream, Hank loaded the fat orange incendiary buckshot and .308 rounds with trembling hands. As each round slid in, Hank's hands grew steadier. Finally, he snapped the actions closed on both weapons, took a deep breath, and stood up. He needed a jog.

The air was still chilly with the remains of last night's thunderstorm. Hank found it refreshing, breathing more deeply than he usually did on his morning jog.

As he circled around the block of small brick buildings behind his apartment complex, he stopped at the corner diner for breakfast. The man behind the bar was stout, fifty, a long scar running down his cheek, courtesies of a Brotherhood of Steel laser.

"Morning, Art."

"Morning to you too, Hank. So, what'll it be?"

"Eggs Benedict, hashbrowns, and coffee, double black, cream, no sugar."

He turned around and dropped a fire ant egg on the griddle, followed by a slice of smoked mole rat, muffins, and chopped potatoes.

"You know, I always took that Inkay fella to be a real straight shooter, ya know?"

"Yeah."

He placed the mole rat meat on the muffin and turned the heat down low.

"But I guess ya can't always judge a bookworm by its cover, can ya?"

Hank's reply was a bone-dry monotone. "You're a riot, Arty."

"Haha. Someone's grumpy today." But the stout man didn't press any further. He served Hank the food.

Hank finished his meal, walked back home and took a shower, then turned on the radio to the weather station. The voice was chipper.

"Sunny, with a high of eighty-eight degrees. Humidity, 15%, winds from the southwest at four miles an hour."

Thumbing through a wardrobe, Hank looked for one of his lightweight, white linen suits, and a blue shirt. He would have to appear before a judge in the evening, and it wouldn't help to come in smelling like a ghoul.

As he dug around, the radio switched to an advertisement. It started with a voiceover: "Fellow citizens, today, we face a great crisis, just like our forefathers faced against the Enclave and the Brotherhood, and we ourselves faced against the Legion. Today, we face the threat of a shortage of food." The sound of children's voices, playing hopscotch, followed by a woman's voice that said "Sorry honey, no dinner tonight"-and the same children now crying. Then, the voiceover: "Tom McLafferty pretends like he doesn't see this problem-and maybe he can't, given how he spends all his time in a mansion or a corporate boardroom. But Lee Oliver does see the problem, and Lee Oliver has a plan to solve it. Are we going to let our children starve? The General won't. Vote for the Bear. Vote-"

Hank switched off the radio set. He looked in the mirror.

A study in lines, he thought. He still took the unarmed combat classes with other ex-Rangers, but lately his joints had begun to feel creaky, reflexes slower. Not by much, but just enough that he would no longer trust himself in a combat zone.

Trust. "Wasn't that why you left? Gave up your golden chance at a commission?" Hank said. The man in the mirror smiled back.

* * *

Eddie had gotten to the office before him. Lately he'd always been doing that. Motivated. Just like himself when he was younger, Hank thought.

The young assistant came into the office to talk about the summons and complaint, but soon the two found themselves just sitting there, looking glum and defeated. Hank heard a sizzle and looked up.

"There's seven ashtrays in this room, Eddie."

"Okay."

"No need to use a coffee cup. That's disgusting."

"I said okay, Hank."

"Yeah, yeah. If she came in saying she was Lana Davis, you'd say okay to that too."

"Look, Hank-she gave us Inkay's real phone number and address-"

"All she needed for that was the goddamn phone book."

"No, no-she said it was a private listing, not on the public record."

A pause.

"When I find out who that phony bitch was-"

Hank found himself drawn to the newspaper. Under the headline, he saw a name in small italics and smiled. He picked up the phone.

"Operator, can you get me James Parker at the Times?"

"Hey, Jimmy. How's it goin... the wife and kids still doin' fine? Yeah, yeah... Ben Steinberger... yeah, Steinberger. He works for you, right?... great... okay, I'll stay on the line, take your time."

Hank covered the mouthpiece and looked at Eddie.

"And how about that, huh, kid? That phony broad won't know what hit her."

"What does Jim owe us?"

"His first divorce."

Hank picked up the receiver again.

"... Yeah, listen, where did you guys get those photographs... Yeah, blowing a fuse over palatine hill love nest-that's cute, Jim... so who sent them to you... I sent them?"

Hank laughed uncomfortably.

"Why would I be asking how you got them if I sent them?... Jimmy?... Jimmy... C'mon, level with me for once. My nut's in the wringer and it's beginning to hurt... yeah... yeah-yeah."

Hank hung up the receiver, dropping it down like a losing hand of cards.

"So he says you sent them?"

Hank looked at Eddie, then looked out the window.

"-what a bunch of cocksuckers."

* * *

The door was marked Charles R. Inkay, and the rest of the lab was noisy with scientists returning from lunch break. Hank risked it, decided not to knock, and entered an outer office.

The secretary looked surprised. Hank spoke first.

"Mr. Inkay, please."

"He's not in, Mr..."

"...Redstone."

The secretary stiffened and started to frown, before catching herself.

"May I ask what this is regarding?"

"It's a personal matter. Has he been out long?"

"Since lunch."

"Gee whiz-" Hank glanced at his watch "-and I'm late."

"He was expecting you?"

"Fifteen minutes ago." Hank stood up and began to walk towards the inner office. "Why don't I go in and wait?"

Without waiting for a response, he walked the through the door. The secretary picked up the phone and began furiously dialing.

Charles Inkay had decorated his office spartanly. Most of the wall was occupied by large topographical maps detailing mines, farmland, and rivers. A simple mahogany desk took up the front center of the room. Facing it on the back wall was a bureau dresser nearly identical to the one Hank had at home. The afternoon sun shone on the maps through a full length windows that overlooked crowds of businessmen and NCR officials milling about Tandi Square. Except for the view, it reminded Hank of the quarters of his old commanding officer.

Hank moved to the desk, watching the translucent pane in the upper half of the door as he did so.

The desk was similarly functional. Four fountain pens, a calendar, a clock, a typewriter, a pair of glasses, and an electric fan. The only purely decorative object was a framed, tinted picture of a younger Evelyn, dressed in tribal robes, riding a brahmin.

He began to open and close desk drawers one after another. One of the drawers seemed stuck, so Hank gave it a kick. Something inside gave way with an audible ping, and it slid open.

Hank pulled out a used checkbook-riffed through the stubs, like a deck of playing cards-then a set of keys, an old phone directory, and an engraved invitation to the Mojave Victory Banquet at the NCR Presidential Palace six years ago.

He ducked his head such that the drawer was at eye-level and saw something flashing a small green light. With slightly more effort, he pulled out Inkay's Pip-Boy. Toggling the switch, he was surprised to find no password in the system. "Must have just had a factory reset," he thought, but then screen after screen of data began to flash, mostly maps, along with a few graphs, too quickly for Hank to read through. Finally, the Pip-Boy settled on projecting a constellation of small blue, green, and red dots floating over the outlines of the Mojave and Arizona.

Hank was just about to zoom in on the map when he spotted a shadow looming in front of the translucent pane. He quickly shoved everything back into the drawer, then closed it with his knee, nearly knocking Inkay's glasses off the table.

A short, bald, slightly plump man holding a brown bag lunch entered the room, a polite but concerned look on his face. Hank recognized him as the man assisting Inkay at the Val Verde town hall meeting.

"Can I help you?" The man extended his hand. "Burt Carlson, deputy chief of the department."

Hank matched his pleasant tone. "Henry Redstone, and it's not a departmental matter."

"I wonder if you'd care to wait in my office?" Hank understood this to be more a request than an invitation. He nodded, and followed Carlson out, through the outer office to his office down the hall. As they passed row after row of scientists busy clipping and spraying plants under grow lights, Hank could feel conversations stop and eyes on the back of his head. The deputy chief spoke up.

"You see-this whole business in the paper with Mr. Inkay has us all on edge-"

"-perfectly reasonable."

"Glad to know you can understand, Mr. Redstone."

Carlson's office was noticeably smaller than Inkay's office, but much more richly decorated.

Hank panned his eyes across one wall, where numerous photos hung. Most of them were hunting scenes-he saw the same group of men standing around a deathclaw, cazadores, mole rats, and a lakelurk. One group of photos was different-Hank stared for a second, then recognized it as a time-lapse of Arroyo's growth from village to town to small city.

"It's where I grew up. Please, take a seat."

The chair was quite comfortable. Behind the deputy chief, on a wooden mantelpiece, was a giant arm that Hank recognized as of deathclaw origin. There was also a small logo of a hornet on the corner of the wooden board holding the deathclaw arm, with the initials C.H.L. below it.

"After you work with a man for a certain length of time, you come to know him, his habits, his values, and so forth-well, he's either the kind who chases after women or isn't."

"And Inkay isn't?"

"He never even kids about it."

Hank winked. "Maybe he takes it very seriously."

The chief laughed appreciatively, loosening up a little.

"You don't happen to know where Mr. Inkay is having lunch?"

"I'm sorry, I don't."

"Well, tell him I'll be back."

Hank spotted a tray of business cards on Carlson's desk.

"Mind if I take one of your cards? In case I want to get in touch with you again."

"Help yourself."

He fished a couple off the tray, stuffed them into his handkerchief pocket. The deputy chief walked him out to the elevator, where he saw another man about his own age, only a head taller and a foot wider, dressed in a plain suit that fitted him about as well as a brown paper bag. Hank recognized him and faked a pleasant tone of voice.

"Cabrioni, what you doing here?"

Cabrioni stared at the two with unblinking eyes, and watched the deputy chief press the elevator button.

"They shut my water off, what's it to you?"

"Well that's the next floor up." Hank snuck a grin. "How'd you find out, anyhow? You don't drink it, you don't bathe in it-maybe they sent you a letter. Ah, but then you'd have to be able to read."

Cabrioni's face flushed and he moved toward Hank, clenching his meaty hands into fists as he did so. Carlson stepped between them.

"Relax. Glad to see you here."

Hank turned to the deputy chief. "You know Lee Cabrioni here?"

"I hope so, he's working for us."

"Doing what?"

"Well, frankly, there have been some threats to hijack some of our fertilizer caravans."

"Any particular reason?"

"Well, it's this darn shortage. We've had to ration fertilizer and some of the farmers are desperate. But what can we do? We need to make sure the rest of the NCR has food."

"Well, you're in luck, Mr. Carlson."

"How's that?"

"When Cabrioni was sheriff of Redding, the smugglers sold hundreds of pounds of jet right on the main street, and never lost a gram. He ought to be able to able to watch your fertilizer for you." And with that, Hank ducked into the elevator and pressed the close door button.

* * *

Whoever had designed the Inkay house, Hank liked him. The house was small, but luxurious. Though luxurious, it chose to hide from the street, helped by a tall row of well-kept hedges. A pair of coyote statues sat atop matching marble pedestals. Hank reached across a stone snout and pressed a doorbell.

A silver-haired butler with straight white teeth answered the door.

"Henry Redstone to see Mr. Inkay." He handed the butler a card from his wallet.

"Please wait a moment, good sir." The butler then turned stiffly.

Given the perfection in his dental work coupled with his advanced age, Hank guessed he was from Vault City. Hank quietly whistled. "Money to burn," he thought.

A ghoul gardener trimmed a hedge nearby. Mixed with the clipping sound was a squeaking noise. Hank turned his head and saw a chauffeur washing a cream-colored Chryslux with a chamois. Steam rose off the hood, in spite of the mid-afternoon heat.

"Please." The butler had reappeared. He gestured for Hank to follow.

Hank glanced around as they entered the house. A maid was cleaning in the den. They passed through it, out some French doors along a trellised walkway to a large pond with running water.

"You wait here."

Hank was left standing by the pond. It was suddenly very quiet, except for the running water. The pond was overflowing. After a moment, the gardener came shambling through a gate. He smiled at Hank, and picked up a wooden pole lying by the pond. Using it to extend his reach, he pushed aside a gleaming object at the bottom of the pond, which was blocking the drainage pump.

After a moment, the water receded and the ghoul dropped the pole.

"Pat fur crash."

Not understanding, Hank replied slowly. "Yeah. Pat fur crash."

The ghoul nodded, and was off, leaving Hank staring at the object in the bottom of the pond. He picked up the tool the gardener was using, and started using it himself, nudging the gleaming object closer.

He then spotted Evelyn rounding a turn, coming down the trellised pathway. Hank was a little taken aback at seeing Evelyn, and slightly annoyed. Nevertheless, he casually set down the pole, turned, and extended his hand.

Evelyn was wearing jeans, lathered white on the inside of the thighs and laced with brown brahmin hair. She stood in riding boots, and was perspiring a little, but looked younger than she did in Hank's office. She did not return the handshake. Hank withdrew his hand.

"Yes, Mr. Redstone?"

"Actually, I'm here to see your husband, Mrs. Inkay."

He laughed, a little nervously. He waited for a reply. There was none. The Vault City butler appeared on the veranda.

Evelyn broke the silence. "How would you like something to drink?"

"What are you having?"

"Iced tea."

"Yeah-fine, thank you."

"Two iced teas, Neville."

The butler immediately nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Evelyn sat down at a glass-topped table. Hank joined her.

"My husband's at the office."

"Actually, he's not. And he's checked out of his apartment at Palatine Hill."

Her response was immediate and tense. "That's not _his_apartment."

Hank let it slide. "Anyway, I-the point is, Mrs. Inkay, I'm not in business to be loved, but I am in business, and believe me, whoever set up your husband, set me up. Shady's a small town, people talk-"

He waited for a response. Evelyn's eyes burned green, but she remained silent.

"I'm just trying to make a living, and a I don't want to become a local joke-"

"Mr. Redstone, you've talked me into it. I'll drop the lawsuit."

"What?"

"I said I'll drop it." The iced tea came in on a tray. The butler set it down between them.

"So let's just drop the whole thing." She smiled. "Sugar? Lemon?"

"Both." Hank looked aside for a second. Then he turned back. "Mrs. Inkay?"

"Yes, Mr. Redstone?"

"I don't want to drop it." Evelyn looked up. Hank continued. "I should talk this over with your husband."

The ice cubes in her tea suddenly rattled as her hand shook a little. She looked concerned. "Why? ... What on earth for? Charles seems to think you're an innocent man."

"Well, I've been accused of many things, Mrs. Inkay, but never that." He laughed, nervously. She didn't respond.

"You see, somebody went to a lot of trouble here, and I want to find out, lawsuit or no lawsuit." He took a long pull out of the glass. "I'm a detective. I'm not the one who's supposed to be caught with my pants down... so I'd like to see your husband-unless that's a problem."

Her voice picked up a slight edge. "What do you mean?"

"May I speak frankly, Mrs. Inkay?"

"Yes, Mr. Redstone."

Hank ratcheted up his politeness. "Well, that little girlfriend, she was attractive-in a cheap sort of way, of course-she's disappeared. Maybe they disappeared together somewhere."

"Suppose they did. How does it concern you?"

"-Nothing personal, Mrs. Inkay, I just-"

"It's very personal. It couldn't be more personal. Now tell me, is this a business or an obsession with you?"

Hank dropped the pleasant act. "Look at it this way-now this phony broad, excuse the language, she says she's you, she hires me. Whoever put her up to it, didn't have anything against me. They were out to get your husband. Now if I can see him, I can help him. Did you talk this morning?"

An epiphanic look washed over Evelyn's face. It took a few seconds, then Evelyn lightly brushed some of the brahmin hairs on her jeans.

"-no, I went riding rather early-"

"Looks like you went quite a distance."

"No, just riding bareback, that's all. Anyway, you might try the Aradesh or Seth Reservoirs-sometimes at lunch Charles takes walks around them-otherwise he'll be home by six thirty."

Hank stood up and put on his hat. "Thanks for dropping the suit. I'll stop by."

"Please... call first."

* * *

Hank rode up a winding road, following a flood channel into the barren hills. The electric motor in his bike whined as it strained to pull Hank up the steep grade.

A fire truck and ambulance were parked at the entrance to the reservoir. The chain link fence with its KEEP OUT sign was open; a few people, mainly policemen, milled around it. As Hank approached, they stopped him.

"Sorry, this area's closed to the public, sir."

Hank hesitated for a second, then reached in his handkerchief pocket and fished out a card.

"It's all right-Burt Carlson, Deputy Chief of Research."

The guard took a look at the card, then waved him through.

"Sorry, Mr. Carlson. Go on down."

Hank rode through the gate, along the reservoir, past more policemen. He spotted a pair of police cars, one marked, the other, unmarked. He stopped and stepped off the cycle. Several men stood there with their backs turned, one talking quietly, staring directly into the reservoir where other men in small skiffs were apparently dredging for something.

One of the men turned and saw Hank. A look of recognition crossed his face, followed by mild annoyance.

"Hank-for Chrissakes-"

Hank barely acknowledged him. "Hi, Roy."

Roy grabbed his arm. "-C'mon, get out of here before Corvus-" Roy was too late. One of the plainclothed officers, a tall, powerfully built ex-Legion man in his early thirties, looked their way.

Both Hank and the man registered considerable surprise at seeing one another. The men around them were even more uneasy. Roy's face was actually twitching. Finally, the Legion man smiled.

"Hello, Hank."

Hank smiled back. "How are ya, Drew."

"Lousy cold I can't seem to shake, but other than that, I'm fine."

"Summer colds are the worst."

"Yeah, they are."

Hank reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette case. A fireman raised his hand in protest. "No smoking, sir-it's a fire hazard this time of year-"

The Legion man answered him. "I think we can make an exception-I'll see he's careful with the matches."

Hank lit up, took a drag. "Thanks, Drew." They started walking, slowly, towards the reservoir shoreline.

"How'd you get past the guards?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I lied a little."

Corvus nodded in response. Then, noting Hank's tailored suit and silk tie, he said: "You've done well by yourself."

Hank felt a little sheepish. "I get by."

"Well, sometimes it takes a while for a man to find himself. I guess you have."

Roy interrupted. "Poking around in other people's dirty linen."

Hank smiled. "Yeah. Tell me, Drew, you still throwing refugees in jail for spitting in the laundry?"

"You're behind the times, Hank-they've got steam irons now-and I'm out of Palatine."

"Since when?"

"Since I made lieutenant-"

Hank was impressed in spite of himself. "Congrats."

"Mm-hmm. So what are you doing here?"

"Looking for someone."

"Who?"

"Charles Inkay. You seen him?"

The police lieutenant stopped, turned, smiling slightly. It was not a smile that made Hank comfortable. "Yes. Oh yes."

"I'd like to talk to him."

"You're welcome to try. They're bringing him up now." Corvus pointed to a team of two firemen who were pulling on a rope. The rope was taut-they had hooked something-and then two feet, one shoeless, followed by the rest of Inkay's body, appeared.

Somewhere in the hills, a cazador began to buzz.


	3. A Nosy Fellow

**3. A Nosy Fellow**

Hank hated waiting. Especially when it involved waiting in the hallway of the basement of the local coroner's office.

"So much for only taking matrimonial work," he muttered, forgetting to keep his thoughts silent. The two detectives sitting down the corridor lifted their heads out of the newspaper and snickered a little.

Hank ignored them, the heavy presence of death around him keeping down his temper. He tried to listen through the opened door.

Inside the morgue, Evelyn and Corvus stood over the body of Inkay. The lieutenant had the sheet drawn back. Evelyn nodded.

Corvus dropped the sheet back. He and Evelyn moved a few feet to one side and whispered, almost as though they were trying to keep the corpse from hearing them.

"-It looks like he was washed down the entire length of the runoff channel-could he swim?"

"Of course. He grew up in San Francisco."

"Obviously, the fall must have knocked him unconscious."

Evelyn nodded slightly in response. The lieutenant coughed. A coroner's assistant then wheeled the body through a door marked "autopsy".

"This alleged affair he was having-the publicity didn't make him morose, or unhappy?"

At the sound of this question, Hank rose and looked through the doorway. Drew saw him, ignored him. Evelyn did not.

"...well, it didn't make him happy..."

"But there is no possibility he would have taken his own life?"

Evelyn replied sharply: "No."

"Mrs. Inkay, do you happen to know the name of the young woman in question?"

Evelyn showed a flash of annoyance. "No."

"Do you know where she might be?"

"Certainly not!"

Corvus began to slowly move towards the door. "You and your husband never discussed her?"

Evelyn's voice began to stumble. "He... we did... he wouldn't tell me her name. We quarreled over her... of course-it came to me as a complete surprise-"

"A complete surprise?"

Evelyn hesitated for a moment. "Yes."

"But I thought you'd hired a private investigator-"

"A private investigator?"

Corvus gestured vaguely towards the door. "Mr. Redstone."

"Well, yes-" Evelyn turned around and stopped in mid-sentence. They looked at one another for a long moment.

Hank looked away, down the hall. She kept looking at him. "But I... I... did that because I thought it was a nasty rumor I'd put an end to..." She finished and stared plaintively at Hank. Corvus took two steps back, towards some other bodies. Hank said nothing.

"And when did Mr. Redstone inform you that these rumors had some basis in fact?"

Evelyn looked at Corvus, caught, not knowing how to answer him. Hank spoke for her, smoothly. "Just before the story broke in the papers, Drew."

Corvus nodded knowingly. They began to slowly walk away from the storage room, standing aside as another corpse, reeking of alcohol even in death, was wheeled out.

Corvus, with exaggerated politeness, to Hank: "You wouldn't happen to know the present whereabouts of the young woman."

"No."

"Or her name?"

Hank's voice was steady. "No."

They walked a few steps further down the hall.

"Will you need me for anything else, Lieutenant?" Evelyn had recovered somewhat.

"I don't think so, Mrs. Inkay. Of course you have my deepest sympathies-and-if we need anymore information, I'm certain we'll be in touch."

Hank put on his hat. "I'll walk her out to the car, Drew." Evelyn threw him a look of gratitude. They went through a couple of outer doors and saw several reporters milling about the main entrance, laughing and kidding about Charles' death. As the reporters saw them, one cocked his head, and like a pack of zebras, they descended on Hank and Evelyn in a flurry of white shirts and dark suits.

Hank hurried Evelyn past the thicket of extended notepads, lightbulbs, and microphones, stopping only briefly once she was safely out the door to address the crowd.

"And remember, fellas, that's Redstone. With an R."

Once they arrived at Evelyn's car, she began to fumble feverishly through her purse.

Hank looked into the car. "Mrs. Inkay?... Mrs. Inkay."

Evelyn, flushed, perspiring: "...just a minute..."

Hank gently touched her arm. "You left your keys in the ignition."

"Oh... thank you." She leaned against the side of the car, looked at her feet for a moment. "Thank you for going along with me. I just didn't want to explain anything... I'll send you a check."

"A check?"

Evelyn got in her car. "To make it official, that I've hired you." Then she drove off.

Hank looked up. Roy was looking around the parking lot. When he saw Hank, he cocked his head towards the front door, to let Hank know he wasn't free yet.

* * *

"Don't give me that, Drew, you had the sergeant drag me back in here for a statement."

Corvus shrugged. "I don't want it anymore."

"No?"

Slowly, with mock reverence: "No-it was an accident."

"You mean that's what you're going to call it."

Corvus looked at the body. "That's right." His voice tightened with contempt. "Out of respect for his civic position."

"What'd he do, Drew, make a pass at your sister?" They began to walk out of the room for the second time.

Drew stopped, looked as if he was chewing something over in his brain. "No-he drowned my sister, along with about five hundred other people. But they weren't very important-just a bunch of dumb refugees in the wrong place at the wrong time."

They kept walking, reached the stairs, past a poster that read The Courier Delivered. Shouldn't You? Buy Bearclaw Bonds Today. "Now beat it. You don't come out of this smelling like a rose, you know."

"Oh yeah? Can you think of something to charge me with?"

"When I do, you'll hear about it." Both men chuckled a little. Then Corvus turned and walked down the hall.

Hank turned around and nearly tripped over a stretcher. It was the alcohol-smelling body, being pushed by a fat, jolly man wearing a black apron and hood, like a cross between Santa Claus and the Grim Reaper. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth.

"Hank, what're you doin' here?"

"Nothin', Morty. It's my lunch hour, so I thought I'd drop by and see who dropped dead lately. Say, how are you?"

"Never better. You know me, Hank."

"Yeah-so who you got there?"

Morty pulled back the sheet-both men recoiled from the smell, overwhelmed-then quickly dropped the sheet back in place.

"Sammy Schulbert, local drunk-used to hang around Fenway Alley-" Morty brushed some sand from the man's face, laughed. "Quite a character. Lately he'd been living under a bridge-had a bureau dresser down there and everything."

Hank had already lost interest. He started to move for the stairs. "Yeah."

"Drowned, too."

Hank stopped in mid-stride. "Come again?"

"Yeah, got dead drunk, passed out in the bottom of the riverbed."

"The Aradesh River?"

"Yeah, under Ranger's Point. What's wrong with that?"

Hank moved back to the body and began to examine it closely. "It's bone dry, Morty."

"Well-it's not completely dry."

"Yeah, well he ain't gonna drown in a damp riverbed either, no matter how drunk he was. That's like drowning in a teaspoon."

Morty shrugged. "We got water out of his lungs, Hank. He drowned."

Hank walked away, mumbling. "Jesus, this town..."

* * *

Hank parked his bike on the bridge, under a sign bolted into a concrete support column that read **Ranger's Point.**He looked down into the riverbed below.

From the bridge, Hank could see the muddy remains of a collapsed shack, its contents strewn down river from the bridge. Below him, lying half over the storm drain and one wall that was on the bank of the river, was a sign that proclaimed EDEN TOWERS - THE FUTURE HOME OF CRIMSON CARAVANS AND MINES, which was used as a roof of sorts. Downstream, there was a dresser, an oil drum, a Chryslux seat cushion, a Sunset Sarsaparilla crate-the trashy remnants of Schulbert's home.

Hank scrambled down the embankment and landed in ankle-deep mud. His shoe made a soft slurping sound as it was pulled out. He began to walk a little further downstream when he heard the vaguely familiar squishy clip-clop of something. Clearing the bridge, on the opposite side was the little Legion boy, again on his skinny Brahmin, riding along the muddy bank.

The two looked at one another a moment.

Hank spoke first: "You were riding here the other day, weren't you?"

The boy didn't answer. Hank spoke again: "Speak English?... Loqui English?"

The boy finally nodded. "Ita."

"You were talking to a man a few days ago..." Hank pointed to his eyes. "...he wore glasses, he-"

"Yes."

"-uh, what did you talk about, do you mind my asking?"

"The green water."

"What about the green water?"

"When it comes."

"When it comes? What did you tell him?"

"It comes in different parts of the river. Every night a different part." The brahmin snorted. The boy rode slowly on.

Hank climbed up the embankment, slowly, noting the direction the storm drain by Ranger's Point took. It was headed above, towards the Westin Hills, where the sun was setting.

It was dark now, the rays of the evening sun slowly being unseated by a rising moon. Hank drove more slowly. The bike headlight threw a thin beam across the drainage channel, forming dancing shadows on the rocky hills behind the foliage growing out of the ditch. The whine of the motorbike was louder this time. Hank guessed that he would have to replace the fission battery soon.

He rounded another bend. The road became unpaved, a crunching of gravel added to the engine whine. The plant life suddenly became lush, almost overwhelming. Heavy clusters of oak, ferns, and eucalyptus were everywhere. It was all quite still. Another turn, and Hank glipsed a pie-shaped view of a lake of lights in the city below. Then, a final turn, and the road became straight, rocky hills replaced by concrete cladding.

He almost missed the channel exit. Hearing a bubbling noise, Hank killed the engine and stepped off the bike to investigate. A lone halogen light overhead on some high-voltage tension wires was the sole illumination. Beneath the hard sodium-orange glow, Hank could make out the mesh of a chain link fence topped with razor wire.

He followed the fence to the ditch-no luck, the fence extended downward another six feet to fully seal the entrance. But the section of fence above the ditch was missing its razor teeth. Hank looked around one last time, saw no one, and climbed over. His feet landed on asphalt.

He walked for fifty more yards in the darkness. His eyes were beginning to adjust, and he could make out the outline of a huge, seemingly deserted research and production facility. Here and there, smokestacks and pipes extended forth at crazy angles, almost as if they had been tossed about by a giant. Hank looked to the ditch, which was now wider and shallower. It seemed to lead into a massive flat area around one hundred yards ahead, darker in color than the surrounding mountains, yet softly aglow, seemingly from some deep source under the surface.

All of a sudden, there were two loud gunshots from atop the hills; Hank felt the rounds pushing through the air behind his shoulderblades. Immediately dropping to one knee, Hank dove into the ditch while unholstering a pistol from his jacket pocket.

The ditchwater splashed around his shoes; even in the dim moonlight, Hank could tell that something was wrong with it-too chunky, almost as if someone had poured a box of Cinnabix gruel into it and let it sit for a full day. Hank heard the sound of men scurrying through the brush, coming near him, so he cocked his pistol in a very noisy fashion. The footsteps began retreating.

Hank waited. The men seemed to have passed him by. But there was another sound now, no longer a gentle bubbling, but a growing, echoing, almost growling sound. It puzzled Hank. He started to lift his head to catch the direction.

The next few seconds seemed to pass by in a series of stutter-step frames. First, below him, the trickle of water began to rise, then, to his left, a splashing noise, then, a wall of water came crashing into him-and he now he was surrounded by the chunky water.

Hank scrambled to maintain his footing, but it was too late. He was picked up and began to tumble downstream, bouncing painfully against the twists and turns in the channel, stopped only by the fence he had climbed over earlier. The blow nearly knocked him unconscious, but Hank retained enough presence of mind to firmly hook his left hand through one of the chain links. Pulling with all his strength, he managed to tear himself away from the torrent of water.

Sitting by the edge of the ditch, against the fence, Hank took a moment to regain his breath. His suit was now dyed bright green, and dripping more of the green liquid. One of his shoes was gone. His Pip-boy screen was cracked in two, and no matter how he tried to adjust his posture, it seemed like he was rubbing up against a bruise.

At least his gun was still there. Hank checked it, made sure the inside was clean, and then flipped the safety back on. There had been no accidental discharge. Hank felt lucky. Then he remembered that whoever had shot at him was still out there, somewhere, and he quickly stood up, ignoring his aching muscles.

He began to climb over the side of the fence. He was midway up when a voice sounded out behind him.

"Hold it there, kitty cat." The voice was nasally, displeasant, and had a tribal accent.

Hank felt a hand on his shoulder. He debated for a second whether to try and wrestle with the man behind him, but then a gun barrel wormed its way into his right ear and settled that argument. Hank let go of the fence and put his hands up.

The man turned him around and pinned his arms behind his back. Hank looked up and saw a familiar face-the brown paper bag, Lee Cabrioni-and an unfamiliar one, short, almost a midget, in a white suit, red bow-tie, and disproportionately large two-tone shoes-an outfit that made him look like a circus clown. Cabrioni let Hank get a good look at both of them, then gave him a sucker punch. Hank doubled over in pain.

"You're right. I don't drink the water. But at least I can breathe the air." Then he hauled Hank up. Hank heard the rattle of a butterfly knife.

"Cabrioni, Jesus." Cabrioni didn't reply-only smiled and nodded at the smaller man, cocking his head in a "go-ahead" gesture.

The smaller man walked right up to Hank's face, and stuck the knife into his nostril. The blade threw an orange glare into Hank's eye. He winced.

"You're a very nosey fella, kitty cat... you know what happens to nosey fellas?"

The smaller man smiled and shook a little with excitement.

"Wanna guess? No? Okay. They lose their noses."

With a quick flick the smaller man pulled back on the blade, laying Hank's left nostril open about an inch further. Hank screamed. Blood gushed down onto his shirt and coat. He bent over, instinctively trying to keep the blood from getting on his clothes. Cabrioni and the smaller man stared at him.

"Next time, you lose the whole thing, kitty cat. I'll cut it off... and feed it to my bloatfly, understand?"

Cabrioni gave Hank a hard kick in the groin. "Tell him you understand, Hank." Hank was now groveling on his hands and knees.

He mumbled, "I understand." Hank could only see his tormentor's two-tone brown and white wing-tipped shoes-lightly freckled with his blood.

The two men turned and walked away.

* * *

Eddie was trying not to stare. But to be honest, there wasn't much else on the face to stare out. An enormous bandage was spread-eagled across Hank's nose, making it look twice the size it normally was.

"You need some Med-X?"

Hank shook his head. "No thanks. I don't touch that stuff." The phone rang. Hank tapped a button on the intercom. "Yeah, operator."

The metallic voice responded. "A Miss Wilcox calling."

"Who?"

"Joan Wilcox."

"Don't know her-take a number."

Eddie spoke up. "So some contractor wants to run a Floramin field and he makes a few payoffs. So what?"

Hank turned slowly to Eddie. He lightly tapped his nose. Eddie continued. "So you think you can nail Cabrioni? They'll claim you were trespassing."

"I don't want Cabrioni. I want the big boys that are making the payoffs."

"Then what'll you do?"

Hank leaned back in his chair. "Sue the shit out of 'em."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah-we find 'em, sue 'em, and make a killing. We'll be having cocktails at Dean Domino's twice a week and pissing on ice for the rest of our lives."

"Sue people like that and they're liable to be having cocktails with the Judge who's trying the suit."

The phone rang again. Hank looked irritated. "Miss Joan Wilcox again. She insists you know her."

"Okay." Hank picked up the phone reciever. There was a click, followed by the hiss of a new phone line. "Hello, Miss Wilcox. I don't believe we've had the pleasure."

A matronly voice responded. "Oh yes we have... are you alone, Mr. Redstone?"

Hank replied facetiously. "Isn't everybody? What can I do for you, Miss Wilcox?"

"Well, I'm a working girl, Mr. Redstone-I didn't come in to see you on my own."

"When did you come in?"

"I was the one who pretended to be Mrs. Evelyn Inkay, remember?"

Hank's arm gave an involuntary jerk, knocking over a mug of a lukewarm coffee into Eddie's lap. Eddie gave a short yelp. Hank, to Eddie, barely covering the phone reciever: "Shut the fuck up!" Then back to the phone, playing it cool. "Yes, I remember-nothing, Miss Wilcox, just going over a detail or two with my associates... now, you were saying?"

"Well I never expected anything to happen like what happened to Mr. Inkay." She paused, then resumed with a pleading tone. "The point is, if it ever comes out, I want somebody to know that I didn't know what would happen."

"I understand... if you could tell me who employed you, Miss Wilcox-that could help us both-"

"Oh no. No, no, no. Never."

A pause.

"...Why don't you give me your address, and we can talk this over in private?"

"No, Mr. Redstone-just look in the obituary column of today's newspaper..."

"The obituary column?"

"You'll find one of those people."

"Those people? Miss Wilcox-"

She hung up. Hank looked at Eddie, coughed a little. Eddie pointed to his lap and shook his head.

* * *

The lounge had rich, redwood paneling almost over every booth, cut into undulating patterns by the soft overhead glow of salvaged Old World lighting. A velvet voice drifted across the floor, drawing an admiring look here, teasing out a smile there. A pleasant place. Hank even had to rent a car to make the dress code.

He was seated with his back to the door, at an angle where anyone coming in could be seen through the reflection on the glass of whiskey in front of him. He flipped through the paper until he found the obituary column-scanned it-Maurice Anderson, dead on the 13th, Charles Inkay, Emma Syme, Harold Bigman Johnson, all dead on the 15th-looked up-and abruptly tore the column from the paper and put it in his pocket. He then closed the paper. This time, the headline was not about him:

**Val Verde Bond Issue Passes Council**

_Twenty million cap referendum to go before the public._

Evelyn Inkay suddenly appeared through the side door, from the kitchen. Hank nodded, nonplussed, and rose, allowing her to sit. He watched her remove her gloves, slowly. Her hands were delicate, like that of a bird. She was wearing a dove gray gabardine-subdued, tailored to her petite frame. The only indication she was in mourning was a black translucent veil over her face.

"Thanks for coming... drink?"

The waiter appeared. Evelyn was looking at Hank's nose. She turned her head to the waiter. "Tom Collins-with lime, not lemon, please."

"And for the gentleman?"

"Gimme another scotch on the rocks."

The waiter responded crisply-"One Tom Collins with lime, one scotch on the rocks"-and exited into the kitchen.

Hank pulled out a torn envelope. The initials EMI were faintly visible in delicate print on the corner of it.

"I got your check in the mail."

"Yes. As I said, I was very grateful."

Hank slid the envelope across the table and coughed, slightly. "Mrs. Inkay, I'm afraid that's not quite enough."

Evelyn responded, a little embarassed. "Well, how much would you like?" She began to reach for her purse.

"Stop it. The money's fine. Its generous, but you shortchanged me on the story."

Evelyn's voice dropped a few degrees. "I have?"

"I think so. Something besides your husband's death was bothering you. You were upset, but not that upset."

Evelyn replied, like an Alaskan winter. "Mr. Redstone..." She flashed her eyes at Hank, who pretended not to notice. "...don't tell me how I feel."

The drinks came. The waiter set them down. Hank picked up his scotch and took a long pull, drinking nearly half the glass.

"Sorry about that. Look, you sue me, your husband dies, you drop the lawsuit like a hot potato, all of it quicker than the wind from a duck's ass-excuse me. Then you ask me to lie to the police."

Evelyn, sheepishly. "Well it wasn't much of a lie."

"If your husband was killed it was." Hank pulled the check back towards his side of the table. "This could look like you paid me to withhold evidence."

"But he wasn't killed."

Hank smiled in response. "I think youre hiding something, Mrs. Inkay."

"-Well, I sup...pose I am... actually, I knew..." Evelyn searched for the right word. "...about the affair."

"How did you find out?"

"My husband."

"He told you?" Evelyn nodded. Hank continued. "And you weren't the slightest bit upset about it?"

"I was grateful."

"You'll have to explain that, Mrs. Inkay."

"Why?"

Hank's voiced became dipped in sarcasm. "Look, I do matrimonial work, it's my métier. When a wife tells me she's happy her husband is cheating on her, it runs contrary to my experience." He looked knowingly at Evelyn. "Unless..."

Evelyn responded. "Unless what?"

"Unless she was cheating on him too." Evelyn didn't reply. "Were you?"

Evelyn was clearly angry, but controlled it. "I dislike the word 'cheat.'"

Hank, dryly. "Did you have affairs?"

"Mr. Redstone-"

"Did he know?"

Evelyn was indignant. "Well I wouldn't run home and tell him whenever I went to bed with someone, if that's what you mean."

Hank finished his drink.

"Is there anything else you want to know?" Evelyn asked.

"Where were you when your husband died?"

Evelyn almost cut him off. "I can't tell you."

"You mean you don't know where you were?"

"I mean I can't tell you."

"You were seeing someone, too."

Evelyn looked squarely at Hank. She didn't deny it.

"For very long?"

"I don't see anyone for very long, Mr. Redstone. It's difficult for me." She paused, finished her drink. "Now I think you know all you need know about me. I didn't want publicity. I didn't want to go into any of this, then or now. Is that all?" She phrased her last sentence as a exclamation rather than a question. Hank nodded, then picked up the envelope.

"Oh, by the way. What's the 'M' stand for?"

Evelyn stammered slightly. "Mac... Maclean."

"That your maiden name?"

"Yes... why?"

"No reason."

Evelyn leaned closer to Hank.

"You must've had a reason to ask me that."

"No, I'm just a snoop."

"You seem to have had a reason for every other question."

Hank coughed. "No, not for that one."

"I don't believe you."

* * *

The parking attendant stepped out the drivers' seat in Hank's car. He then walked over and opened the passenger door for Evelyn.

"Oh-no. I've got my own car. The cream-colored Chryslux."

The attendant dutifully started for her car. Hank turned to him. "Wait a minute, sonny." Then, to Evelyn. "I think you better come with me."

"What for? There's nothing more to say." She turned to the attendant. Get my car, please." The man resumed running towards it.

Hank leaned on the open door of his car and stared into Evelyn. He talked quietly, but spat the words out.

"Okay, go home. But in case you're interested, your husband was murdered. Somebody's dumping tons of Floramin out of the city reservoirs when we're supposedly in the middle of a famine, he found out, and he was killed. There's a waterlogged drunk in the morgue-involuntary manslaughter if anybody wants to take the trouble which they don't. It looks like half the city is trying to cover it all up which is fine by me. But, Mrs. Inkay-" now, leaning inches from her "I goddamn near lost my nose! And I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think you're hiding something." And with that, Hank got into his car.

Evelyn steadied herself on the open car door. She stared at at Hank for a long moment. Then Hank gently tugged the passenger door closed.

"Mr. Red!-" She caught herself, decorum restraining her mid-shout. "-stone."

Hank drove off into the mid-afternoon traffic, leaving Evelyn looking after him.

* * *

This time, Hank knocked.

The secretary responded. "Come in!"

Hank walked through the door. The secretary was not happy to see him.

"H. H. Redstone to see Mr. Carlson."

The secretary immediately went up and into the Inkay's old office. Hank turned and strolled around the office a moment-his eyes settled on a photographic display entitled The HISTORY OF THE DNR - THE EARLY YEARS, along the wall. He stopped as he spotted a photo of a man with the same silver cane Hank had seen in Eddie's series of pictures-he was standing high in the mountains, near a pass. The caption read TOM MCLAFFERTY - 2268.

Hank immediately pulled out the envelope containing Evelyn's check. He looked at the corner of it, his thumb pressing down under the middle initial M. Then he looked back to the photos.

The secretary returned. "Mr. Carlson will be busy for some time."

"Well, I'm on my lunch hour. I'll wait."

The secretary raised her voice a tick. "He's liable to be tied up indefinitely."

Hank smiled in response. "Well, I take a long lunch. All day sometimes."

Hank pulled out a cigarette case, offering the secretary one. She refused. He lit up and began to hum Sinatra's 'Blue Moon', strolling along the wall looking at more of the photographs. He began with a few photos of a much younger Inkay, along with Tom McLafferty. One of the captions read: CHARLES INKAY AND TOM MCLAFFERTY AS THE LAKE TAHOE MINE COMES TO LIFE - 2270. Hank, still humming, turned to the secretary.

"Tom McLafferty worked for the natural resources department?"

The secretary stammered for a second. "Yes. No."

"He did or he didn't?"

"He owned it."

Hank stopped humming in surprise. "He owned the natural resources department?"

"Yes-in a sense. He used Crimson money to restart the mines and factories left from the Great War."

"He owned the minerals supply for the entire NCR?"

The secretary replied, exasperated. "Yes."

Hank was genuinely surprised. "How did they get it away from him?"

"Mr. Inkay felt that the public should own the display-I mean, the minerals. If you'll just read the display-"

Hank glanced back, hummed a little, then- "Inkay? I thought you said McLafferty owned the department."

The secretary threw down her pencil. "-Along with Mr. Inkay."

"They were partners."

"Yes. Yes, they were partners." She got up, annoyed, and went into what was Inkay's inner office.

Hank went back to the photographs. He heard a scratching sound, apparently coming from just outside the outer door. He moved quickly to it, hesitated-then swiftly opened the door. Two workmen looked up at Hank with some surprise. They had been scraping away Inkay's name on the outer door.

The secretary returned, seeing the workmen looking at Hank with some confusion.

"Mr. Carlson will see you now."

Hank nooded graciously, dropped the secretary a small box of chocolates, and headed on in to see Carlson.

* * *

The first thing Hank noticed was a subtle but perceptible difference Carlson's posture. He was now head of the department.

"Mr. Redstone, sorry to keep you waiting-these staff meetings, they just go on and on-"

"-yeah-must be especially tough to take over, under these circumstances."

Carlson smiled ruefully. "Oh yes. Charles was the best department head the country ever had." He then paused for a second. "My goodness, what happened to your nose?"

Without missing a beat, Hank replied: "I cut myself shaving."

Carlson leaned back and placed his feet on the table. "You ought to be more careful. That must really hurt."

Hank smiled. "Only when I breathe."

"Only when you breathe..." Carlson laughed, a deep belly laugh. "Don't tell me you're still working for Mrs. Inkay?"

Hank continued smiling. "I never was."

Carlson stopped smiling. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I, actually. But you hired me-or you hired that whore to hire me."

The department chief took his feet off the desk and leaned forward, nearly knocking over a pair of fountain pens. "Mr. Redstone, you're not making a whit of sense."

Hank sat down. "Well, look at it this way, Mr. Carlson. Inkay didn't want to build a production field-and he had a reputation that was hard to get around. So you decided to ruin it." Hank paused for emphasis. "Then he found out that you were dumping Floramin every night-and then he was drowned."

Carlson folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. "That's an outrageous accusation. I don't know what you're talking about."

Hank stood back up. "Well, Jimmy Parker over at the Times will. Dumping thousands of gallons of fertilizer down the toilet in the middle of a famine-now that's, as they say, news." Hank began to head for the door.

The department head stood up. "Wait-please sit down, Mr. Redstone. We're... well, we're not anxious for this to get around, but we have been diverting a little production to fertilize mutfruit and pinyon nut orchards along the Long 15 and the Colorado. As you know, the farmers there have no legal right to our product, and since the famine we've had to cut them off-the Core Region comes first, naturally. But, well, we've been trying to help some of them out, keep them from going under. Naturally, when you divert Floramin-you get a little runoff."

Hank blinked. "A little runoff."

"Yeah."

"Where are those orchards?"

"Like I said, along the Long 15 and Colorado."

"That's like saying they're somewhere in Arizona and Texas."

The department chief held up his hands and shrugged. "Mr. Redstone, my field men are out and I can't give you an exact location..."

Hank nodded knowingly. Then he spoke up, a friendlier tone. "You're a married man, am I right?"

Carlson was puzzled. "Yes...?"

"Hard working, wife and kids?"

"Yes..."

Hank put his hand on Carlson's shoulder. "I don't want to nail you-I just want to find out who put you up to it. I'll give you a few days to think it over." Hank handed over a card. "Call me. I can help. Who knows? Maybe we can lay the whole thing off on a few big shots-and you can stay head of the department for the next twenty years."

Hank smiled and walked out the door, leaving an unsmiling Carlson.

* * *

Hank decided to make dinner at home. It had been ages since he cooked, but he still remembered how. He went back to Art's diner.

"Say, Art-you got any surplus ingredients I could buy?"

The fat man shrugged, then said: "I'll see what I can find. Since when do you cook?"

"Since I made the mistake of agreeing to try your attempt at a wasteland omelette."

"You're a riot, Hank." Both men chuckled. Art disappeared into the storeroom. When he reemerged, he was holding a large paper bag marked "Brahmin Flank Steak", two onions, three carrots, some garlic, a jalapeno, a broc flower, and a bag of potatoes and xander roots.

"Enough for a beef stew. Just remember to char the beef in the-"

"-in the fireplace for two minutes before I throw it in the stewpot, right."

"How'd you know that?"

"C'mon, Art. Don't you remember? I served at Forlorn Hope. Of course I learned how to cook Legionnaire's Stew. It's the only thing worth eating out there."

At the mention of Forlorn Hope, Art grimaced a little. "Heh. Oh, right."

Hank immediately apologized, coughed a little. "Look, I'm sorry-I didn't mean to bring up your daughter's-I mean, Penny's-"

"It's ok. You can say the word. Death. Why are we all so afraid of it? After we die, it's not like we end up feeling anything-and-" turning hopeful "-you get to meet your dead relatives, just like she met her mother." Then, the man bit his lip. "Only hurts for the living, left behind."

"Yeah." Hank felt guilty. "Tell you what. Close shop early tonight. I'll cook." Then, trying to cheer him up, Hank said: "C'mon, you gotta make up for feeding me that omelette sometime."

* * *

"So I says, why don't you stay fashionable. And then the little boy says-he walks up real close to him, see, as close as you are to me-"

Hank finished washing the last of the dishes, and began his drying his hands with a plain white towel. "What does he say, Art?"

"Fuck you, clown!"

Both men snorted with raucous laughter. Hank poured Art another glass of rye. They were drinking from a massive crate of vintage Wright family liquors. The production dates acid-etched into the bottom of each bottle started at 2235 and ended at 2251. Art turned one empty bottle sideways, noted the numbers, and gave a whistle of admiration.

"Whoo-wee! We're drinkin' some good stuff right now. Say, my boy, how did you end up getting your grubby little fingers on something like this? I thought only guys like Mc"fag"erty and Lee Oliver could touch this stuff."

Hank chuckled. "You're not too far from the truth, old man. I won it from a big shot. A hand of poker."

"Really. You stared down Babylon and lived to tell the tale?"

"Heh-heh. That I did. We were celebrating the victory at the Dam in New Vegas, see, and this guy comes walking in wearing a suit of Enclave power armor with this floating robot following him like a pet dog. Sits down at the poker table, and then proceeds to clean everybody's clock. I mean, at one point, he had a stack of chips in front of him so high the other players at the table couldn't even see his face-well not that anyone could see through that armored mask, but you get the point."

"Uh-huh." Art hiccuped. "And?"

"Well, I went in there, and with my tiny little stack, I took him down. Near the end, he was reduced to just his original wager-this crate of liquor here, those Deathclaw horns you see on my bookshelf, and this funny-looking metal casino chip that he said he didn't need anymore." Hank jostled the ice cubes in his cup. "And then he stood up, said he wasn't playin' anymore, either-turned to me and asked if I had any ammunition. Well I said 'of course', since the war was over and I wouldn't be shootin' anytime soon. So this other trooper and I gave him all our 5.56 rounds, and he got the chip, while I got the rest of the stash."

"No shit." Art took a swig from his whisky glass.

"Yep. No shit. Was a good time."

Art's face turned thoughtful. "Y'know, you never did tell me about your time in the service. I guess I can't blame you-you must have been trying not to upset me, after hearing about what those Legion bastards did to Penny. But today, don't worry about it. If you offend me, I won't remember a thing tomorrow." Art smiled. "I'll be fine. Except for the pounding headache, of course."

Hank smiled back. "Well, I guess I should start from the beginning. I enlisted in the fall of 2078. The potato harvest up near my dad's farm had failed, and we didn't have enough food or money to feed all five of our family through the winter. The enlistment bonus would go a long way to solving that problem, so I took it."

Art nodded. "Go on."

"Well, when we first got to basic I scored well on marksmanship, so they put me in a sharpshooter training course. Not that it was really that much different-back then the military was so depleted of manpower, the training course length had been cut in half to get more men out the door. Anyhow, I was assigned to the sharpshooter duty with the 173rd Regiment-that was Penny's regiment, too-and we spent a year just waltzing around the Mojave. It was a good time."

Art replied wistfully. "Yeah, those were the good old days for me, too. Would get a letter twice a month from Penny, telling me all about how she was helping folks there live a better life. I had my own cafe in Downtown Shady, business was good since it was so close to the rail depot. Saw hundreds of young folks smiling as they had one last cup of NCR joe." The fat man looked down for a second. "But many of them, I never saw again."

Hank lowered his head. "Yeah." Then he picked his head back up again. "After the year was up we got an urgent order to go to Forlorn Hope. Apparently the Legion raiding parties had thinned them out a bit and we needed to reinforce." Hank paused. "Do you want me to go on?"

Art nodded. "Tell me, Hank. Tell me how she died."

"Well, I wasn't on the patrol team-the sharpshooter company was kept in reserve. From what I remember, Penny volunteered for the first patrol of the regiment. She didn't make the cut because she fell ill. The first patrol made it back home safe. She got sent out on the second patrol-they weren't so lucky." Hank paused, looked at Art. The fat man seemed to be doing fine, with the exception of a flush from the alcohol. "The second patrol-they were all killed or captured. That's when we got called out to rescue them. We did beat the enemy back, but by the time we'd found Penny and the others, they'd all been... been..." Hank suddenly found it difficult to finish the sentence.

Art finished it for him. "...they'd been raped, repeatedly, both the men and the women. And then strangled. And then nailed to crosses. Is that right?"

Hank nodded, hesitantly.

"Well don't just stop there. Go on. You still have a year and a half left in your story."

Hank coughed. "Yeah. Well, after that patrol, the C.O. ordered a change of tactics. We were to hunker down, and only launch raids into the surrounding territory when we found the enemy beforehand. In order to find the enemy, though, we would take some riflemen and sharpshooters and put them into two-man scouting teams to cover the area." Hank opened another bottle, this time of mutfruit cognac. He poured both of them a glass.

"I was in one of those two man teams. We shot lot of things out in the bush. The my old partner died and they put me up with another one. And then another one. I was on my third partner when I ran into that Drusius guy I told you about."

Art raised an eyebrow. "Drew was Legion?"

"Yeah. The rest of his cohort was about to kill him. Apparently he was a decanus-that's like a corporal or sergeant-and he refused to booby-trap his own wounded men, so the centurion-that would be a lieutenant or a captain-ordered him to be crucified and whipped to death."

Art shook his head. "Animals."

Hank nodded in agreement. "Anyhow, we cut through everyone else in the cohort and saved him. Unfortunately, my partner was lost in the engagement. We never found his corpse." Hank took a sip of the cognac. "When I hauled Drew back to camp, everyone wanted to kill him, revenge for what the Legion had been doing to us, but the C.O. and I kept them from doing that. Slowly, Drew earned the respect of everyone at the camp. Washing toilets, fixing weapons, that sort of thing. So when my fifth partner got killed, I took him along. Everyone figured that with my lucky streak, Drew would end up dead within the month. But that didn't happen. Instead he taught me all about Legion tactics, and what I-and the rest of the regiment-was doing wrong."

"So you became friends."

"Well, I never could fully trust the guy. But we still worked together well-well enough, since he owed me a life debt. When the war finally ended and we were both looking for work, it was his idea to apply for the Shady Sands police. I thought he was crazy. Could you imagine an ex-Legion guy handing out parking tickets to NCR folks?"

Art chuckled. "He'd be mighty lucky not to get shot."

"No kidding. But somehow, Drew made it. He worked harder than anyone else on the force. I was lazy. I did as little as possible-but Drew, he _tried_. And now he's a detective lieutenant in Homicide, and I'm doing matrimonial work."

"Aw, come on. It ain't that bad. You've got a nice apartment, you're doing well for yourself-all you need is a girl and you'd be complete."

Hank chuckled. "Yeah, a girl. Got Dear-John'd four months after enlisting. When I last stopped by my hometown, she was already on kid number three."

Art nudged him in ribs. "Better hurry up on that, son."

"Yeah, yeah. Anyhow, that's my story. Ain't much else to tell." Hank paused for a second, looked into his cognac. "The war-the Mojave-taught me a lot. Taught me how to play caravan, and why I shouldn't. Also taught me how to walk, talk, and shoot my way out of trouble." Hank took a sip. "Sometimes, though, I get in to too much trouble."

At that moment, the phone rang. Hank reached up to get it. Art dropped his forehead down to the table and began to snore.

"Henry Redstone."

The voice on the other end of the line was scared shitless. It was Eddie. "Hank, Hank. Listen. That b-b-b-blue monster, he's come back and he wants to k-k-kill you."

Hank wrinkled an eyebrow. "What? Why? Did we not pay him enough?"

"N-no." Hank heard a soft sob. "He said something about killing people who defy the Boulder God. I didn't believe him, so he took out a chainsaw and began to tear up the place."

"What? He's at the office?" Then Hank glanced at the watch. "It's nearly one o' clock, Eddie. Are you still there?"

"Yes. I've been trapped here for the past six hours. He has a stealth boy. I blinded him with a laser pistol, though, so we both can't see each other. I can still hear him pacing around the room. Please. Do something, Hank." Then, there was a whining noise in the background, followed by a mutant's childlike, yet menacing voice. "I have you now, my pretty. Come to papa!" And a crash, followed by silence, as the chainsaw bit into the phone receiver.

Hank hung up. Then he called the police.

"Yes?"

"Operator, I'm calling to report a code-41 involving an NK, probable double-P, at Eighteen-Eighty-Five Bearpaw Street, Suite Six-C. NK is armed with a chainsaw and has cloaking, I repeat, has cloaking." Hank paused, heard a pencil furiously scribbling in the background. When the operator had finished writing it all down, Hank spoke again.

"I will be arriving on the scene shortly. Pursuant to Citizens' Self-Defense Act No. 75, I will be voluntarily bringing armor and a firearm to help apprehend the suspect. Please tell the lead officer at the scene that I will be dressed in a black trench coat and Combat Armor Mark Two, and will be wielding an automatic riot shotgun..." Hank heard the operator gasp, slightly, then- "...and some fragmentation grenades." Though Hank knew he couldn't be there for another twenty minutes, he also knew that the mere threat of a massive shootout erupting between a heavily-armed civilian and an invisible supermutant in downtown Shady Sands would guarantee a visit from the Tactical Situations Unit. He hoped that would keep Eddie alive.

Before she could protest, Hank hung up the phone. He kicked the wastebasket next to Art to catch any vomit, then placed a blanket over him and walked over to his closet.

It had been years, he thought. But the lucky streak just didn't seem to end.


	4. Drawing The Line

**4. Drawing The Line**

Hank checked the action on the riot shotgun one last time. The helmet felt itchy, and the armor plates chafed against his neck. The adrenaline compensated, but not by much.

"Lucky for you, Eddie, I have nightmares." Hank was tempted to carry his DKS-301 into battle, but realized that it would be useless in a close quarters fight against a Nightkin with a chainsaw. He also had a subconscious urge to talk his friend out of the murderous rampage rather than just performing cranial surgery from two hundred yards away.

The detective stepped out into the night. The first thing he noticed was that someone had stolen his electric bike.

"Goddammit. Now, of all times..." Hank looked down, saw bike tracks leading from the gravel parking space into an adjacent abandoned lot, and followed. The lot was muddy, and soon the tracks disappeared. Hank looked around. Empty. A freeway overpass loomed in the distance, and the lights in the other apartments were all dark. Hank felt the hairs on the back of his neck pick up. He cycled the action on his shotgun.

Then, suddenly, a hiss. The whispering death of a gauss rifle bolt. It had been close, very close, and Hank's legs twitched, combat reflexes kicking into high gear and launching him face first into the mud.

Hank said a hoarse whisper. "Son of a bitch!" Other curses, too, many voices, close, too close. Hank spun around, sprayed four shotgun blasts in a wide arc, heard a man scream, then followed a blind zigzag through the weeds-then-coming to rest at a dead end alleyway directly under the overpass. Footsteps behind him, rustles in the grass. His eyes caught a small drainpipe that led towards a balcony-seized, grabbed it, and then he was on a ledge.

He waited there a while. The voices receded, grew softer. Seconds dragged: four men stood below him holding plasma rifles. Whispers: "Dead meat"-"Let's be reeeal careful"-"Crazy Mojave fuck." Then, a scream-a man's scream, hoarse.

"Cabrioni? He's still alive?" Cruel chuckles. "Let's go retrieve him." Then another voice. "Ten caps says he doesn't make it to St. Elizabeth's." More noises of agreement. A nasally tribal accent - "Twenty" - then the moaning stops.

The four men turned out of the alley. Hank-a deflating tire, breathing out slowly, shallowly.

Five minutes later he was hoofing it at an even jog through a deserted Tandi Square. He was a third of the way through when he remembered the death whisper-then, doubling back, he hugged the shadows until he was through the empty expanse.

Bearpaw Street turned out to be closer than expected. One last intersection to cross. Hank stepped, stopped. Something was wrong with his foot-no-something was wrong with the ground under his foot. It was sticky. Kneeling closer, rubbing his fingers, the smell of brains. Then a sharp, slippery object, a skull fragment. Then the rest of the body.

Hank looked around. It was a nice, hidden position. Somebody had been lying in wait. But why was he dead? And more importantly, why hadn't the Tacticals still hadn't arrived? The entire street was dark. Thinking back to the training manual-"Protocol for calling TSU involves a maximum fifteen minute response time." He checked his watch. Thirty-six minutes since he had left home.

Cocking the hammer on the repeating shotgun, Hank ascended the stairs slowly. The infrared on his visors was on max. The door creaked, far more loudly than he would have liked.

There was no one in the entryway. Eddie's desk was a mess, drawers askew, aftermath of a hurried search for a laser pistol. The sound of breathing, not his own breathing, close.

Hank swung his visor around in a circle. Nothing. Reached the office door-still nothing. He gently turned the knob, eased the snout of his shotgun through the crack-and then the breathing stopped.

"Are you going to shoot me, or arrest me, officer?"

Hank knew he'd been had. He laid the shotgun gently on the ground, then took off his armored helmet.

"Hands in air. And walking. Into the office."

Hank heard something sliding down the drywall. The nightkin eased its way out of the wedged spot between the rafters and roof it had found.

He found Eddie sitting in the chair, bound and gagged. At the sight of Hank, Eddie's muffled screaming went up an octave. Hank shook his head to show he, too, had lost.

"Sit ass down."

"Yeah, yeah." Hank tried to keep his cool. "Sorry about the mess in the office, Chippy."

"Chippy not name anymore. Boulder God name Chippy King of Ails." The nightkin wrapped a length of rope around Hank's chest and the back of the chair.

Hank found the bindings slightly uncomfortable, but oddly reassuring. They were a reminder-at least Chippy didn't want him dead right away.

"So what's all this about, King?"

"Hold on. Boulder God speaking to King. Boulder God say that if King can kill Hank, then Boulder God will go free."

Hank was puzzled. "Go free? You mean your God is not free?"

"No. Bad men with glowing rifles came and took Boulder God away. Away from home. They make deal. Hank die, Boulder God come home."

Hank wasn't sure whether to laugh, to cry, or to just sit there with a blank expression on his face.

"Ok. _King_. Don't worry, if you free me, I can rescue your boulder god for you."

The nightkin was unpersuaded. "No. They say Boulder God far away, over the desert, over the river, under mountain-they say you could never find it."

Hank felt a little sick inside. "All this for a rock?" he thought. This time, he kept his thoughts silent. "At least leave Eddie out of this. If you've gotta kill someone, just kill me."

"Fair enough." The nightkin then bashed Eddie into unconsciousness with back end of the chainsaw and stepped into a pool of moonlight from the window. Hank could clearly see his tormentor now-clear, in front of him, were two enormous slashes across the nightkin's chest. Torture marks from an electric prod. Hank spoke up: "Who gave you those?"

"These marks? Helper gave. Helper taught me to forget old Gods, make peace with Boulder Gods-"

"But what if the helpers were lying?"

"Helper do not lie! Helper help King of Night learn."

"Who is 'helper?'" Hank tried to wrench an arm free, but the bindings were too well done.

"Helper comes to find me on Boulder God day. You know that day as Saturday. We dance in the park and helper teaches me and tells me how to serve God." The nightkin actually smiled as he said this.

"Dance in the park?"

"Helper not good dancer. He too fat, too slow, too brown. Most of the time he just teach me. Teach me about rocks, and about the Boulder God. Sometimes he just talk about "ail". Said every night he come home to drink the "ail". That is why King of Ails has this name. Helper gave me this name."

Hank suddenly had a flash of insight. "Was Helper named Lee?"

-And then, suddenly, the whisper of death, but now, a roar, shattering the window and splitting the nightkin in two. The lower half took a half step forward, stumbled, and then toppled into Hank's lap. The upper half crawled for three seconds along the ground, mumbling "Boulder boulder boulder" again and again to itself until it too, went still.

A hiss-then-silence. The next half-hour was stolen from Hank's memory by the knockout gas of the Shady Sands Tacticals.

* * *

Hank awoke in the morgue. At least he was sitting up and not strapped to a corpse gurney.

Morty was standing off to one corner, looking warily at him, the same mask of restrained shock that living people usually reserve for dead bodies-or morticians for live ones. Hank played dumb.

"Where am I?"

"Back in the land of the living, Hank. You're lucky the police sniper got him when he did." Drew stepped out from behind a curtain. His expression was flatly unsympathetic. "Judging on the basis of two dead bodies in two days, if this is how you go about your work, I'd be surprised to see you make it through a whole week."

Roy followed the lieutenant through the curtain. "What happened to your nose, Hank? Someone slam a bedroom window on it?"

"No, Roy, your wife-she got excited, crossed her legs a little too quick, understand, pal?"

Roy gave Hank the finger. Hank rubbed his temples, pretended not to notice, and turned to Mort. "I need a glass of water."

The mortician disappeared through a door. Something in his gait told Hank that he would not be returning with a glass of water anytime soon.

"You won't be needing a glass of water, Hank. You'll need a lawyer." Then Escobar stood in front of him. He cocked his head. "Come here. I need you to take a look at somebody."

The lieutenant drew back the curtain. Hank expected to see two neatly arranged halves of a nightkin. Instead, it was the body of a plump woman in her early forties. Half of her neck had been laid open.

"This look familiar?" Drew held up a signed contract inches from Hank's nose. The heading read:

**H. H. Redstone & Associates**

_Matrimonial Work. Expert and Discreet Service._

Then the lieutenant held up a photograph. It was one of the photos of Inkay and the girl in the Palatine Hill apartment. "How about this?"

"Yeah, I took 'em. So what?"

"How did she-" pointing at the corpse "-happen to have them?"

Hank took a deep breath. "Either you tell me or I guess- 'cause I don't have the answer."

Drew nodded knowingly. "You really think I'm stupid, don't you, Hank?"

"I don't think about it one way or another. But if you want, gimme a day or two, and I'll get back to you. Now I'd like to go home. It's been a long day." Hank began to move towards the door.

Drew stepped in front of Hank, blocking his path. "I want the rest of the pictures."

"What pictures?"

"This broad hired you, Hank, not Evelyn Inkay."

Hank played dumb. "Yeah?"

"Yeah-somebody wanted to shake down Charlie Inkay, she hired you, and that's how you happen to know Inkay was murdered."

Hank, with mock innocence: "I heard it was an accident."

Drew laughed his uncomfortable laugh. "C'mon, you think you're dealing with a bunch of dumbasses? Inkay had salt water in his goddamn lungs! Now how did he get that... in a freshwater reservoir?"

Hank was genuinely surprised at this piece of information, but remained nonplussed. Drew continued.

"You were following him day and night. You saw who killed him. You even took pictures of it. It was Evelyn Inkay-and she's been paying you off like a slot machine ever since her husband died."

Hank smiled. "You accusing me of extortion?"

The lieutenant leaned in close, so close that Hank could see individual hairs in his five-o-clock shadow. "Absolutely."

Hank took a step backwards. "I don't think I need a day or two-you're even dumber than you think I think you are. Not only that, I'd never extort a cap from my worst enemy, that's where I draw the line."

"Yeah, I once knew a whore who for enough money would piss in a customer's face-but she'd never shit on his chest. That's where she drew the line."

"Well, I hope she wasn't too much of a disappointment to you, Drew."

The lieutenant actually managed a thin smile. "I want those photographs, Hank. We're talking about accessory after the fact, conspiracy, and extortion-minimum."

Hank raised his voice. "Why do you think Inkay's body was moved, you dimwit? You think Evelyn Inkay knocked off her husband in the salt marshes-and thought it would look like more of an accident if she hauled him up to a reservoir?"

The lieutenant scrunched up his forehead, chewing over Hank's words. Hank continued. "Inkay was murdered and moved-because somebody didn't want his body found in the marshes."

"And why's that?"

"He found out somebody was dumping Floramin there. That's what they were trying to cover up by moving him."

This stopped the lieutenant. He stood there, dumbfounded a second, then whispered: "What the hell are you talking about?"

"C'mon, Drew. I'll show you." The lieutenant hesitated. "C'mon-make a decision, you're in charge." Roy looked at Drew expectantly. The lieutenant grudgingly nodded.

* * *

The ride out to the salt marshes was bumpy, the back of the squad car cramped. Hank suspected the design choice was intentional. "So, any word on when the other investigation-you know, the one involving a brutal chainsaw attack on my office-can be resolved?"

Roy turned around. His skinny face wrenched into an unpleasant grin. "We're gonna call it a domestic dispute. Right, Lieutenant?"

Drew simply looked into the rearview mirror and shrugged. The sergeant went on: "Well, after the way you handled that case for the smoothskin and the ghoul, a Legion-style relationship between a Nightkin and your partner shouldn't be that farfetched now, should it?"

"Yeah, I agree, it probably isn't-for you. Must have been a real learning experience, growing up with two parents of a different species." Roy shut up.

The lieutenant finally spoke. "Hank, we'll get around to it once we finish up this current case. Believe it or not, there's not much sympathy in the Force right now for schizophrenic supermutants."

"But I thought you said a police sniper killed it."

Drew shrugged. "We might call it that."

They reached the storm drain near dawn. It yawned at the sky, only a trickle of water dropping into the ocean. Drew, Hank, and Roy were standing and staring at the empty pipe, as if expecting it to talk.

Hank looked up at the morning sun, squinted. "It's too late."

Drew replied. "Too late for what?"

"They only dump the Floramin here at night."

A marked police cruiser drove up to the three men, the driver, a patrolman, stepping out. Drew yelled out to him. "Reach anybody?"

The patrolman hurried over. "Carlson, he's the new chief."

"I know who he is. Well?"

"He says-"

Hank interrupted. "I know what he says."

Drew turned to Hank. "Shut up." Then back to the patrolman. "Go on."

"He says that they're fertilizing along the Long 15-there's always a little runoff when they do that. And he says Mr. Redstone knows that, and has been going around making irresponsible accusations for the past week."

The lieutenant turned to Hank, stared at him for a long moment. Roy spoke up. "Let's just swear out a warrant for her arrest. What are we waiting for?"

Hank replied. "Because he just made lieutenant, and he wants to hang on to his little gold bar."

Drew stared hatefully at Hank.

"Have your client in my office by next Thursday-and remember. I don't have to let you go. I've already got you for withholding evidence."

* * *

Hank arrived home, exhausted, wheezing slightly. Art was gone. Sometime during the night, he'd used the wastebasket. Then he'd cleaned out his vomit, and cleared the table too. Good man.

He stepped into the shower, took his time, started mumbling to himself. "Won't even let me sleep. At least they gave me my gun and armor back." He turned the water off, stepped out, and reached for his green bathtowel. It wasn't there. Neither was his armor or shotgun.

She sat with her back to the wall, at the far end of his bedroom. She had her knees up, resting her wrists on them, the ice-blue muzzle of an overcharged plasma pistol emerging from her hands, a gauss rifle strapped to her back.

Hank stepped out of the bathroom. "That you on the overpass?" He closed the bedroom door. "Where's Art?"

She didn't respond to his question. "Flip that deadbolt." He did. "That your friend? Art?" Hank nodded. "He's gone. Real nice guy, thought I was your girlfriend." She looked at the shotgun. "What about the silenced pistol?"

Hank nodded in the direction of his nightstand. Never taking her eyes off him, the raven-haired girl opened the drawer, reached in, took out the gun, and dropped the magazine out of it in one fluid motion.

She wore a green nightvision visor over one eye. Her clothes were black, the heels of her boots digging deep into the carpet.

Hank stood there, naked. He'd been with worse-looking girls before, so he let her stare at him. "You want money? There's four hundred-cap notes in a shoebox under the bed."

"No."

"Want some ammo? All I got, right now."

She shook her head again. "What got into you last night? Why'd you try to reason with that monster? I nearly didn't save you in time."

"Save me? I thought you were trying to kill me."

"Honey, if I'd wanted to kill you, you would have been dead when you stepped into Inkay's office that day." She lowered the plasma gun a tick. "Remember the Pip-Boy that acted funny? I rigged it to explode on command." The fingers curled around the handle were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial. "Or I could have not scattered the five men lying in ambush right next door to your apartment, or the guy with the silenced tommy gun by your office-"

"-Alright, alright. I'm beat." The detective shrugged. "What do you want?" Water continued to drip off his naked body.

"You, Hank. One live body, brains still somewhat intact." Then, with an almost girlish smile- "I'm Lucia Valeria Eudocia. Call me Val. I'm collecting you for the head of my tribe. Just wants to talk, is all. Nobody wants to hurt you."

"That's good."

"Except I do hurt people sometimes, Hank. I guess it's just the way I'm wired." She shifted, stood up, opened a hidden compartment in her jacket. "If I put this plasma gun away, will you be easy, Hank? You look like you enjoy taking stupid chances."

Hank held up his hands, palms open, harmless. "C'mon, I'm a pushover, no problem."

"That's nice." The pistol vanished into the compartment. "Because if you try to fuck around with me, you'll be taking one of the stupidest chances of your life."

She held out Hank's towel, now, hands clenched, wrists slightly bent, and with a barely audible click, two double-edged, eight-inch razor blades slid from their housings inside her forearm. Then she smiled, and in one fluid motion, flicked four pieces of the towel his way.

* * *

Before they left, Hank gave Evelyn a ring. Val sat on his couch, looked through his photos.

There was no answer from her. Hank shrugged. Val began to pack up her things-an energy cell, a makeup kit there. Hank put on a blue suit and a red tie. Val took one look at him and laughed. "You look like Tom McLafferty." Hank stared back, unsure of what to say.

The trip was uneventful-Val returned Hank's bike, which she had borrowed to ride up atop the overpass-and then the two slowly made their way towards Palatine Hill. Along the way, Hank stopped by Art's Diner to give him a thirty-cap note for the beef stew ingredients. Art winked at Val, who made a grand show of hugging Hank's neck so tightly he thought he might pass out from strangulation.

After years in the nicer parts of Shady Sands, the winding, twising corridors of the Legion slums in Palatine seemed suffocating. Left, right, up stairs, down another set of stairs-Hank was lost barely a minute in. They finally reached a small room, eight feet by five, half of a rusty Gulfstream trailer. A small kettle sat on a campfire burning by the sliding sheet metal panels that doubled as the front door. A refrigerator softly hummed.

"Get some coffee. You look like you need it." She set the rifle down, then took off her black jacket, the plasma gun hanging beneath her arm from a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with Brotherhood of Steel logos emblazoned across each shoulder. Bulletproof under-armor, Hank realized, slopping coffee into a bright red mug. His arms and legs felt like they were made out of wood.

"Hank." He looked up, seeing the man for the first time. "My name is Cartius." He sat on the bed. The dark robe was open to the waist, the broad chest hairless and musclar, the stomach flat and hard. Black eyes so dark they made Hank think of an eclipse.

Hank jerked his arm sideways and splashed the man with scalding coffee. The man barely noticed, only blinking twice in response. Hank wondered why the man hadn't dodged, before he realized the man didn't have any legs-he was attached to the bed. The man smiled.

"Get your coffee, Hank," Val said. "You're okay, but you're not going anywhere until Cartius is done with you." She sat cross legged on a dingy couch and began to field-strip the plasma gun without bothering to look at it. Glowing optical piece tracking as he crossed to the table and refilled his cup.

"Served in the war, didn't you, Hank?" Cartius ran a large hand back through his cropped black hair. A tattoo flashed on his wrist. "Nipton, Forlorn Hope, the Hoover Dam. I was invented for the Hoover Dam, you know that?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm an android. Sixth in my series of models, although I'm the only one that made it."

Val spoke up. "Heaviest motherfucker I've ever had the pleasure of carrying."

The android continued. "I was liberated from a Brotherhood lab out in the middle of San Francisco. We were being prepared to launch a hidden strike on both sides while they were busy fighting the dam battle. But other events interceded."

Hank blinked. "Yeah, heard about it. Heard it was the Shi that tried to make a move on the Brotherhood, and the battle ended up torching a third of the city."

"Not a third, only around 19.7% or so. But all our targets were eliminated."

"And Val went in, found you-"

Val interrupted. "Actually, someone found him on the streets afterwards. Well, half of him, anyway. Then they gave him to me."

Hank continued sipping his coffee, coughed slightly. "So we have a razor girl, her Christmas present, and a busted-down trailer. This sounds like the setup to a bad joke."

"Not a joke, Hank. Unless you view your impending death as one."

Hank raised an eyebrow, but kept his voice even. "You'd be surprised what two years at Forlorn Hope can do to a man's sense of humor."

Val stood up. "Alright, enough of the chit-chat. Cartius, give him the details."

Cartius spoke up. "Two days ago, Valeria informed me that you had been massively exposed to raw, unprocessed Floramin-nearly drowned in it, in fact. Now, how much do you know about Floramin?"

Hank shrugged. "Not much. Only that Inkay invented it, and that you get it when you dump brahmin piss and rocks into a starter batch."

"That's not bad, but not entirely correct. You don't need phosphates-rocks-or nitrates-the piss-to form Floramin. Floramin is a genetically modified radiophage; that is to say, it is a living organism that consumes and concentrates radioactive isotopes in its cell walls to harness as a source of energy-then it uses that energy to synthesize sugars and proteins, just like a plant uses solar energy through photosynthesis."

Hank looked to Val helplessly. She held up a finger to her lips. "Keep listening."

"Once the concentration of sugars reaches a set level, the organism begins to shift to acid production, eating through the soil, creating microscopic channels to shift all the radioactive elements downward, out of reach of plant roots. Then the organism releases autolytic enzymes everywhere, killing all its cousins around it, releasing all the sugars and proteins, and if there are phosphates and nitrates in the mix, the soil becomes as fertile and non-radioactive as the richest black earth from before the Great War. So you see, the phosphates and nitrates are completely unnecessary to grow the bacteria-all you need is an area with a large amount of radiation, and you can grow as much Floramin as you want-the minerals are only the icing on the cake. Then you dump it on whatever radioactive patch of wasteland on you'd like, and it turns into grade-A farmland within three days."

Hank shrugged. "So how does that hurt me? If it only affects plants-"

"Remember the trigger for acid release? Well, human blood has a far higher concentration of sugars-glucose, aka blood sugar-than the trigger specifies. So the organism starts releasing acids as soon as it gets into the bloodstream. And since there aren't any radioactive nucleides in your blood, the organism will start to die-and when Floramin dies, it unloads all the digestive enzymes that had been locked up in its cell walls. The cough you've had-that's from the trickle of acid. In sixteen hours, the torrent of enzymes will begin, and by then it will be too late to save you. Do you want to live?"

Hank's wrist was frozen-he began spilling coffee over the edge of the mug.

"I assume that you do-it is a primary goal of organic lifeforms to stay alive and reproduce. Fortunately, we have developed a cure to Floramin poisoning. In order to receive that cure, we would like you assist us in investigating certain matters related to Floramin production and its political and economic implications for the New California Republic."

Cartius suddenly looked to Hank as if he were carved from a block of metal; inert, enormously heavy. A statue. Hank felt like this was a dream, and that he'd soon awake. The android wouldn't speak again. Hank's dreams always ended in these freeze frames, and now this one was over.

Val nudged him in the ribs. "Hank, you're infected with Floramin. You've got about twenty-six hours."

Hank looked at the campfire and shivered. "I think you're full of shit." But his voice was trembling.

Val shook her head. "Cartius built up a detailed model. Based it on the symptoms exhibited by each victim of the Von Metzger disaster. You're fucked, Hank. The model gave you seventy hours total, the first sixty without symptoms-the last ten in excruciating pain."

"You sound like my old commanding officer." Hank gave a slight chuckle, coughed again. "Used to read out everything like a death sentence."

"You don't get it, do you? You _are _about to die. You're sixteen hours away from experiencing the most excruciating pain of your life-think blood flowing out of your eyeballs, your skin flaking off and then dissolving, your brain going haywire-and then, literally melting, running out your ears like ice cream on a hot day."

"I get it, I get it. Now what do we do?"

"We'll need to play vampire for a little bit. Gotta collect enough immunized blood for a flush-out." She opened the refrigerator, showed Hank three packs, frozen. Hank was reminded of the cherry popsicles he used to get once a year for Christmas. "These are already done. Enough for a man one-half your size. We'll need some organs too, a fresh liver at the very least." Then she winked. "Take these, and you'll owe me-and Cartius-a life debt."

"And if I refuse?"

"Well good luck finding enough Type O-negative red sauce to keep you alive, mister. Blood goes at a little over two thousand caps per unit, and without the surgery, you'll need forty units a week for the rest of your life."

Hank shrugged. "Now you really sound like my old C.O."


	5. Coming Home Again

**5. Coming Home Again**

The hospital was spotless, expensively appointed, a cluster of sleek pavilions separated by small formal gardens. Hank remembered the place from a case he'd done for a Mrs. Usanagi.

"Scared, Hank. You look scared." It was lunchtime, already, and he sat with Val in a sort of courtyard. Gray limestone benches, a stand of green eucalyptus, red rock gravel raked into smooth waves. A gardener was tending the trees.

"We'll get it. You got no idea, the kind of stuff Cartius has cooked up in his spare time. Like he's gonna pay these doctors for fixing you with the procedure he's giving them to tell them how to do it. He'll put them a year ahead of the competition. You got any idea what that's worth?"

She hooked thumbs in the belt loops of her black denim jeans and rocked backwards on the heels of cowboy boots. The narrow toes were sheathed in bright Arizona silver. Her eyepiece was a floating emerald, regarding him with an insectlike calm. Most of the hospital staff were busy eating in the cafeteria. The two sat there in the noontime stillness.

"You a working girl?" Her cheeks flushed, but there was no response. Hank looked down, then changed tack. "How long were you seeing Inkay?"

"An old geezer like that? I wasn't seeing him." Something about the way she said it made Hank want to believe her. Still, he pressed:

"Palatine Hill Suites. Name ring a bell?"

A flash of annoyance. "We were talking."

Hank nodded. "About what?"

She stopped rocking her heels, bit her lip for a second. "Redemption."

Hank was puzzled for a moment. "Redemption? For what?"

"Von Metzger."

The gardener walked over, soft gray uniform indicating that he was a prisoner on work release. The convict smiled at them and mumbled an "Excuse me," pointing at the spot under their feet with a rake.

Hank and Val stood up and moved to one side. Hank began to dig through his pockets for a cigarette. "In your shirt," she said.

"Von Metzger? I heard a bunch of Legion refugees drowned. What, you knew 'em?" He fished a wrinkled Desert Ranger filter from the pack and found himself staring at a rusty piece of steel that looked as though it belonged in a junkyard. She used it to light his cigarette.

"They're lying." A moment of weakness-but her eyes were dry. "Von Metzger killed off the rest of my tribe, but they didn't drown. I was the sole survivor. Nearly didn't make it myself, either."

Hank nodded, placed a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry about that." Then he took a drag on the cigarette, blew out a smoke ring. "What happened, anyhow, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I was twelve when it happened. We were taking a shortcut through the Westin Hills to reach the Boneyard-it was dark, and we were a little lost. Then, all of a sudden, we waded through this knee-deep patch of green water in the creek." She paused, took in a deep breath of air, coughed a little on the smoke. "None of us thought anything of it at the time. But then later-later we started getting sick. The elders, first, then the children."

Hank nodded. "And someone found you-rescued you?"

"No." Black hair shimmering as she shook her head vigorously. "They took us away. These men wearing Black Ranger armor came, strapped us to plague wagons along the Long 15, I remember heading east-into the morning sun-into this research facility."

They sat down again. She spat on the ground. "They ran tests on me night and day. Injections, then blood tests, then more injections. Took out a lot of blood-I never knew I had so much in my body. Until one day this gray-haired man-who I later knew as Charles Inkay-he came and let me go." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "Told me never to tell anyone else my story, to go live my life-handed me the keys to that rusty trailer."

Hank finished the cigarette, stubbed it out. "And that's how you met Charles?"

"No-he didn't appear in my life for years after that, but every three months after I left the lab, I would get a package on my front door-a few hundred caps, sometimes medical supplies, scientific books, later, a Pip-boy, a voucher for a set of implants at this clinic."

"And a turbo plasma pistol and gauss rifle." She nodded, beaming. "When did you finally meet him again?"

"A few months ago, he showed up at my trailer-it was dark, you see, and his package was late. So he showed up to deliver it in person."

"What was it?"

"It was Cartius. I had to carry it, though-he had a bad back."

Hank smiled. "Well, aren't you a big girl."

She fixed him a look of spite. "Anyhow, he said he needed to hide Cartius. To get him to calculate a cure."

"To Floramin poisining?"

"Among other things. Inkay said that it was his redemption for Von Metzger-well, that and taking care of me."

"He sounds like a nice guy." She nodded. Hank went on. "So why'd you rig his pip-boy to explode?"

"Data security." She made it sound like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then a look of understanding crossed over her face, followed by a coltish chuckle. "I wasn't trying to kill _him_, if that's what you mean."

"Just like you weren't trying to kill me." Hank opened a foil pack of chocolates and toffee. The green emerald eye followed one piece as it made its way into Hank's mouth. He watched through corner of his vision, pretended not to notice. "So you just decided to follow me after I started following you? Is that why I'm still alive?"

She shook her head. "Cartius saw the newspaper headline and told me to follow you. It's why Charlie is dead-since I was following you that night instead of him." She bit her lip, then continued. "Don't tell the android I said this, but I'm not sure about what Cartius has planned for you. Sometimes he reminds me-" Val's voice tightened a little- "-reminds me of Charles. You know. Not the way he talks, but the way he thinks about things, about other people. You may find his idea of a life debt slightly more literal than mine."

Hank popped another piece of chocolate. "I believe that." Then he smiled a little. "What I don't believe is that you and Mr. Inkay would just shack up at the motel and talk about scientific equations all night."

She stepped on his toes, hard. Hank flinched. "We _never_slept together. Is that clear?" She turned away, put on a pouting look. "I hate to play the self-pity card, but I just told you I've been orphaned and experimented on. Can't you be a little nicer?"

Hank shrugged. "I see a lot of folks in desperate situations. Professional hazard." Then he looked down, moved his foot out of reach. "Sometimes they're faking it." She raised her hand for a slap. He grabbed her wrist, then placed the foil pouch of candies into the slapping hand. "Sometimes, they're not."

She chewed on a piece, expression softening. "You ever been in a desperate situation?"

Hank smiled, looked directly into her. "Wouldn't you say I'm in one now?"

She smiled back. Hank could've sworn the eyepiece twinkled. "Not for long. Look, Cartius is coming." The android was sitting on a wheelchair, pushed by a ghoul lab technician.

"If you'll come in now, sir, the anesthetist is waiting to meet you."

* * *

He awoke next to Val.

His neck was brittle, made of twigs. There was a steady pulse of pain midway down his spine. Images formed and reformed: a flickering montage of the Hoover Dam battle, rangers running out of ammunition, putting on a necklace of lit dynamite, and charging into melee range; centurions grabbing the nearest human being, Legion or NCR, and jumping off the edge of the dam, to take someone with them...

"Hank? It's Saturday, now, Hank." She moved, rolling over, reaching across him. A breast brushed his upper arm. He heard her tear the foil seal from a bottle of water and drink. "Here." She put the bottle in his hand. "I can see in the dark. Micro-channel image-amps."

Hank tried to roll over. "My back hurts."

"That's where they replaced your fluid. Changed your blood. You got a new pancreas thrown into the deal. And some new tissue in your liver. Lots of injections. They didn't have to open anything else up-just a three-hour dip in the healing tank." She settled back beside him. "Eight forty-eight PM, Hank. Got a readout chipped into the optic nerve."

He sat up and tried to sip from the bottle. Gagged, coughed, lukewarm water spraying his chest and thighs. "Where are we?"

"Home. Under the overpass."

"Where's our android?"

"Back in Palatine, logging the results of your operation or something. He wants us to move out soon. The Long 15, the Mojave Outpost, the lab in New Vegas. Apparently the folks behind all this are planning something big." She touched his shoulder. "Roll over, I give a good massage."

He lay on his stomach, arms stretched forward, tips of his fingers against the headboard. She settled over the small of his back, kneeling on the memory foam mattress, the jeans cool against his skin. Her fingers brushed his neck.

"How come you're not with Cartius?"

She answered him by reaching back, between his thighs, and gently encircling his scrotum with a thumb and forefinger. She rocked there for a minute the dark, erect above him, her other hand on his neck. The leather of her jeans creaked softly with the movement. Hank shifted, feeling himself harden against the foam.

His head throbbed, but the brittleness in his neck seemed the retreat. He raised himself on elbow, rolled, sank back against the bed, pulling her down, lips finding her breasts, small hard nipples sliding wet across his cheek. He found the zip on the jeans and tugged it down.

"It's okay," she said. "I can see." Sound of the jeans peeling away. She threw a leg across him and touched his face. Her fingers were warm with the heat of the massage.

Now she straddled him again, took his hand, and closed it over her, his thumb along the top edge of her hips, his fingers down below. As she began to lower herself, the images came pulsing back, the faces, fragments of explosions arriving and receding. She slid down around him and his back arched convulsively. She rode him that way, impaling herself, slipping down on him again and again, until they were both there, floating grains of sand in a timeless space, a vastness like the Mojave, the faces shredding and blowing away down hurricane corridors, and her thighs were strong and wet against his hips.

* * *

Val was gone by morning. Someething handwritten on the nightstand said she would be back at his house around 9AM the next day, and that he should pack for a three day trip to "fulfill his life debt". A smiley face punctuated the note.

He shrugged. A few pills of med-x lay by his nightstand. Hank left them there. As he stood up, he realized this was the first time months when he had actually slept for longer than four hours without waking up from a nightmare. The first thing he did was call Eddie. Eddie's voice was still a little shaky.

"Mornin', Eddie. How you feelin'?"

"...alright, I guess. Do you need me to come into the office?"

Hank opened a nightstand, looked at his business ledger. "No-Drew's boys are probably still combing over it-just work on getting Pedro his watch back. You have the replacement I mailed you?"

Eddie grunted in affirmation.

"Good. I'll be heading out of town for a few days, but I'll give you a ring by tomorrow evening. If the cops call about our nightkin friend, don't say anything-just refer them to our lawyer. Take it easy and rest up."

"Thanks, boss. Have a safe trip." Hank hung up.

He decided to see Art about the supplies-maybe he was selling some caravan lunches or trail mix. He didn't notice the cream-colored Chryslux parked by his bike-then nearly tripped over a stunning redhead who was chain-smoking on the steps outside his front door.

"What's your usual salary?"

Hank continued towards the driveway, barely breaking stride at the sight of Evelyn. "Five-hundred fifty caps daily for me, plus three hundred for each of my operators-plus expenses, plus a bonus if I show results."

She was pale, obviously very shaken. "Whoever's behind my husband's death-why have they gone to all the trouble?"

Hank shrugged and keyed the ignition. "Money. How they plan to make it by dumping fertilizer-that I don't know."

Evelyn stood up. "I'll pay your salary, plus fifty thousand more if you find out what happened to Charles and who was involved."

Hank stopped the motor, looked at the ground for a second, then started heading back towards his apartment. "Let's draw up a contract." As he opened the door, he offered her a hand. She took it, reluctantly.

"Sorry, I don't have much to drink. Would you like a glass of water?"

"N-no. I'm alright, thank you." They stepped into Hank's living room.

The detective leaned back into a recliner. Evelyn sat stiffly in on the middle cushion of a couch. Hank spoke first. "Tell me, did you get married before or after Inkay and your father sold the natural resources department?"

Evelyn nearly jumped at the question. Hank continued, "Your father is Tom McLafferty, isn't he?"

"Y-yes. H-how did you-"

Hank shrugged. "Just a lucky guess. Well?"

"It was quite a while after. I-I was just out of grade school when they did that."

"-so you married your father's business partner?"

Evelyn nodded. She lit another cigarette.

Hank pointed at the ashtray. "You've already got one going, Mrs. Inkay."

"Oh." She quickly stubbed the first one out.

"Is there something upsetting about my asking about your father?"

"No!" Then Evelyn fumbled, dropped the cigarette into her lap, picked it up again. "-Yes, a little. You see Charles and my fa-my father had a falling out..."

Hank leaned forward. "Over the department-or over you?"

She nearly cut him off. "Not over me. Why would they have a falling out over me?"

Hank noted her nervousness, paused. "Then it was over the Natural Resources Department."

"Not exactly. Well, I mean yes." She scrunched up the delicate features of her face slightly. "Yes and no. Charles felt the public should own the minerals, but I don't think... my father felt that way." She leaned back, slightly more relaxed. "Actually, it was over Von Metzger. You know, the production field that broke."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yes. He never forgave him for it."

"Never forgave him for what?"

"For talking him into building it." She took a drag, blew out a tiny puff of smoke from one corner of her mouth. "They never spoke... from that point on."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "You sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure."

Hank nodded. Then he reached turned around, reached behind the chair, and produced a contract form, two sheets with a filler of carbon copy. With a quick and practiced movement, Hank placed his signature near the bottom of the page. Then he handed the pen and paper to Evelyn.

"Sign here. The copy's for you." She did. When she looked back up, Hank was staring intently at her. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some prep work to do."

She nodded and disappeared. Hank didn't move until he could no longer heard the tires of the Chryslux crunching the gravel driveway.

* * *

The vertibird was a noisy, rattling veteran of the Second Mojave War. Hank threaded his way down the tiny aisle of the eight passenger cabin, which was full of middle-aged men in old clothes and their hunting gear. Hank was poked by an anti-material rifle. He turned around. One of the men said something to him, indistinct through the engines.

Hank yelled in reply. "What?"

"I said, you'll have to sit with the pilot." Hank gave a thumbs up to show he understood, then moved forward into the cockpit.

The pilot looked up-nodded for Hank to sit down, then picked up a half-eaten mole rat sandwich out of the co-pilot's seat.

The vertibird took off smoothly, the black and white stripes atop the taxiway gradually receding in the rearview mirrors. The pilot glanced over at Hank, noted his impeccable dress. "Well, you're not going hunting."

Hank shook his head. "Not exactly."

The pilot winked. "Bet that's what you told your wife, though-" He finished the sentence with a laugh. Hank smiled politely in response. "That's what lots of fellas do. Tell the little woman they're going on a hunting trip, then shack up with some little twist by the bay... she pretty?"

Hank replied with mock innocence. "I'm going to see a man called Tom McLafferty-ever heard of him?"

"Is Caesar a Slaver? Who are you, mister?... I ask, because he doesn't see a whole lot of people."

Hank looked out his side of the cockpit for a second, then turned around and said, "I'm working for his daughter."

"That right?" The pilot rubbed his meaty chin. "She used to be some looker."

"She ain't exactly long in the tooth now."

The pilot shrugged. "Well, she must be around thirty-one, thirty-two."

Hank blinked twice. "Really? That old? You must be thinking of a different daughter-"

"No, he's only got one. I remember her age, read it in the newspapers when she ran away."

"She ran away?"

"Oh yeah-it was a big thing at the time-Tom McLafferty's daughter. Christ almighty, she was a wild one." The pilot gave a sidelong glance to Hank, made sure he hadn't offended him, then went on. "Of course, she settled down nicely."

Hank smiled a little. "Well, you never know, do you?"

The pilot chuckled. "That's for sure."

"Why'd she run away?" A blue and white streak appeared between the puffy clouds and the desert horizon. Hank stared for a second. It was the first time he had ever seen the ocean.

The pilot made an euphemistic expression. "Oh, well-she was only fourteen. Body of a little woman, but without the sense to match."

Hank gently nudged the pilot in the ribs. "We missed the best of it, didn't we, pal?" Both men laughed a little lewdly.

The pilot spoke up. "Speaking of which-she ran off to Arizona-rumor was she was knocked up and didn't even know who was the father-went there to get rid of it."

"You don't say?"

"McLafferty was looking for her all over the wasteland-offered rewards, sponsored posses, everything. Felt real sorry for him, with all his money."

Hank nodded thoughtfully. The pilot executed a perfect pylon turn, and banked the Vertibird toward a set of villas along the coast.

* * *

Hank stepped off to the strange smell of ocean air. A triangular blue and white flag, the white shape a stylized outline of a cazador, fluttered atop a small flagpole in the middle of the villa courtyard.

The villa itself was a pleasant but unobtrusive stucco-walled building whose rear half extended into a series of docks jutting into the harbor.

A brahmin wagon came to a halt where a group of ranch hands were clustered around a corral. The circle of men drifted apart, leaving a tall, slightly reedy, but handsome man standing alone. The lines on his cotton shirt seemed to extend past his neck to become a crisscross of wrinkles on his face. Streaks of sandy blonde hair extended under the brim of a broad cowboy hat.

Hank and Tom McLafferty walked toward the main house. A brahmin led on a halter by another ranch hand slowed down and defecated in the center of the path they were taking. Hank didn't notice.

"Bullshit."

Hank paused, not certain he heard the other man correctly. "Pardon?"

Tom pointed at the ground, smiled, continued earnestly. "I said, bullshit."

Hank replied, "Yeah, that's what it looks-I'll give you that."

Tom paused when they reached the dung pile. He removed his hat and waved it, inhaling deeply. "Love the smell of it. A lot of people do, but of course, they won't admit it. Look at the shape."

Hank joined Tom in glancing down, out of politeness. Tom continued: "Always the same." Then he began walking towards the main entrance.

Hank did not move. "Always?"

"What?" Tom turned around. "Oh, damn near-yes. Unless the animal's sick or something."

A pause.

"And, in the morning, when the steam rises off it-that's life, Mr. Redstone. Life."

They moved on. Tom spoke, in an apologetic manner: "Perhaps this preoccupation with bullshit may seem a little perverse, but I ask you to remember this-" he pushed open the front door, revealing marble floors, gilt plating, and a crystal chandelier- "-one way or another, it's what I've dealt with all my life. Let's have lunch."

They ate in the courtyard veranda. Below them was a corral where ranch hands took Brahmin, one by one, and worked them out, letting them run and literally kick up their heels. Tom's attention was diverted by the animals from time to time. An impeccably dressed butler with Legion enslavement marks served them wine and the main course, two broiled fish.

Tom began in earnest. "You know, you've got a nasty reputation, Mr. Redstone. I like that."

Hank responded warily. "Thanks."

Tom continued, still earnestly-"If you were a bank president that would be one thing-but in your business it's... admirable." He forked up a piece of the fish. "And it's good advertising."

Hank still hadn't touched his food. "It doesn't hurt."

"It's why you attract a client like my daughter."

Hank looked over. "Probably."

"But I'm surprised you're still working for her-unless she's already found herself a new husband."

Hank finally picked up his knife and fork. "No-she happens to think the last one was murdered."

Tom stopped chewing. "How did she get that idea?"

Hank cut off a small piece of the filet. "I think I gave it to her."

Tom nodded, a knowing expression on his face. "Mmhmm. Oh-I hope you don't mind. I believe they should be served with the head."

Hank glanced down at the fish whose isinglass eye was glazed over with the heat of cooking. "-Fine, as long as you don't serve the gecko that way."

Both men laughed. Tom spoke. "Tell me-what do the police say?"

"They're calling it an accident."

"Who's the investigating officer?"

"Drew Corvus-he's a Lieutenant."

Tom leaned a little closer. Hank leaned back. "Do you know him?"

Hank raised his eyebrows and nodded. "Oh yes."

Tom kept the lean. "Where from?"

Hank hesitated. "-We worked Palatine together."

"Would you call him a capable man?"

"Very."

"Honest?" Tom dug up a forkful of mashed potatoes.

"Far as it goes-of course, he has to swim in the same water we all do."

Tom gave a small smile. "Of course-but you've got no reason to think that he's... bungled the case?"

Hank shook his head. "None." Then he speared another piece of fish.

Tom chuckled. His voice got louder, more relaxed. "That's too bad."

Hank put down his fork. "Too bad?"

"It disturbs me, Mr. Redstone. It makes me think you're taking my daughter for a ride-" voice low now, confidential- "financially speaking, of course. How much are you charging her?"

Hank responded carefully. Tom noted the tension in his voice. "My usual fee-plus a bonus if I find results."

Tom dropped the next question innocently. "Are you sleeping with her?" Hank blinked twice, didn't answer. Tom's tone turned ingratiating. "Come, come Mr. Redstone-you don't need to think about that, do you?"

Hank stood up. "If you want an answer to that question, I can put one of my men on the job. Good afternoon, Mr. McLafferty."

Tom raised his voice. "Mr. Redstone! You're dealing with a disturbed woman who's just lost her husband. I don't want her taken advantage of. Sit down."

Hank picked his hat up off the table. "What for?"

Tom hesitated for a second, searched for the words. "You may think you know what you're dealing with-but believe me, you don't."

Hank gave a look of faint amusement and put on his hat.

"Why is that funny?"

"It's what Drew used to tell me, all the time, in Palatine."

"Oh yeah? Was he right?"

Hank shrugged. Tom continued, putting down his knife and fork. "...Exactly what do you know about me, Mr. Redstone? Sit down."

Hank gave a look of slight annoyance, then took his hat off. The butler immediately helped him into the chair. "Mainly that you're rich, you sound different on the radio, and you're too respectable to actually try and win the election."

Tom snorted. "Of course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." Tom paused, motioned for the butler to refill Hank's wineglass. "I'll double whatever your fees are-and I'll pay you a hundred twenty thousand caps if you can find Charles' girlfriend."

Hank blinked. "His girlfriend?"

Tom answered quickly. "That girl you took pictures of. Disappeared, hasn't she?"

Hank hesitated-then: "Yeah."

"Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

Hank's response was nonchalant. "No, she's probably scared to death."

"Wouldn't it be useful to talk to her?"

Hank shrugged. "Maybe."

Tom picked up his knife and fork again. "If Inkay was murdered, she was probably one of the last people to see him."

Hank began to eat again as well. "You... didn't really see Inkay much, did you?"

Tom shook his head, smiled. "No."

They were interrupted by the sound of a marching band, leading some men in a loose formation about a hundred yards off. They were dressed in Vault 15 jumpsuits, riding brahmins. For the most part, they were fat in the saddle, barely able to stay atop their ponderous steeds. The two men watched them pass in a disordered column to the music.

"NCR Patriotic Reenactors... bunch of damn fools who pay a fifty thousand apiece towards my election. I let'em practice up out here." Tom stood up to wave.

Hank cleared up the last of his fish. "Yeah. Do you remember the last time you talked to Inkay?"

Tom kept his eyes on the column of men passing by. "No... at my age, you tend to lose track..."

Hank wiped his hands with the handkerchief and picked up his hat again. "Well I do. It was about five days ago. You were outside Dusty's Cantina-and you had one hell of an argument."

Tom turned around and looked surprised for the first time since Hank had seen him. Hank continued. "I've got the photographs in my office-if they'll help you remember. What was the argument about?"

Tom hesitated for a full five seconds, then turned around pensively. "My daughter."

"What about her?"

Tom leaned in close. "Just find the girl, Mr. Redstone. I think she's frightened and I happen to know Charlie was fond of her. I'd like to help her out if I can."

Hank kept his voice in a deliberate monotone. "I had no idea you and Mr. Inkay were that fond of each other."

A flash of anger across Tom's face, then: "Charles Inkay fed this Republic-and he made me a fortune... We were a lot closer than... Evelyn realized."

Hank shifted his weight to one foot, leaned slightly. "If you want to hire me, I need to know what you and Inkay were arguing about."

Tom, slowly and carefully. "Well, she's an extremely jealous person. I didn't want her to find out about the other girl."

"How did you find out?"

Tom smiled. "I've still got a few teeth left in my head, Mr. Inkay-" Hank suddenly realized that while Drew's smile made him uncomfortable, Tom's smile felt like fear kicking him in the gut- "-and a few friends left in town." Tom began to walk Hank towards the courtyard.

"Okay-my assistant'll send you a letter of agreement." Hank stopped walking. "Tell me, though-are you worried about the girl, or about what Evelyn might do to her?"

Tom smiled again. "Just find the girl."

Hank resumed his pace, slightly more quickly now. He wanted to get away from McLafferty. "I'll look into it-as soon as I check out some mutfruit groves."

Tom was puzzled. "Mutfruit groves?"

Hank didn't answer. "We'll be in touch, Mr. McLafferty."

* * *

The ride back with the pilot had been easy. Five of the eight seats were empty, so Hank just stretched and dozed. When he awoke, it was not yet two o'clock and he was already at the taxiway near the downtown monorail. Hank handed the pilot three hundred caps, then hopped aboard a train that led near the Hall of Records.

The archives were dark and quiet, except for the whirring of an overloaded air-conditioning unit. Hank approached one of the clerks at a desk.

"I'm a little lost-where can I find the hard copies of the Colorado River and Long 15 land records?"

The clerk's droopy eyes widened a little; then he responded, facetiously. "Part of the Colorado River valley is considered Legion territory. We don't have Legion territory in our Hall of Records."

Hank blinked and forced a smile. "I'll settle for NCR territory."

"Row thirty-six, section A." The clerk then turned his back on Hank, a perfect example of customer service.

Hank wandered through shelves of books gathering dust, found the volume. The tiny print on the pages made him squint. There were several columns-tract, lot, then parcel, and then even a "metes and bounds" column for where the description of the land boundary was hopelessly complicated (e.g. 6600 paces towards the Hoover Dam, then following the edge of the Colorado River, then 2000 paces towards Phoenix, etc.)

Most of the ink in the descriptions was several years old, faded-in the owners' column, however, there were numerous freshly-typed names, on strips of paper pasted over the prior landholders.

Hank haulded the huge volume back to the clerk's desk. "Say, uh... buddy."

The clerk turned sharply around.

"How come all these new names are pasted into the book?"

"Land sales out of escrow are always recorded within the week."

Hank allowed a look of surprise to cross his face. "Then these are all new owners?"

"That's right." The clerk sat down and began working on pasting more names into a new book.

"But that means-" Hank stammered for a moment. "That means most of the Colorado River valley's been sold in the last few months."

"If that's what it says."

Hank paused for a second, scratched his forehead. "Say, could I check one of these volumes out?"

The clerk looked up, clearly annoyed. "Sir, this is not a lending library, it's the Hall of Records. Come next fall, we will finally have electronic terminals and printers for you to get records of whatever you like."

"And no more need for dimwits like you to sit here pissing people off," Hank thought, but he kept it to himself. Instead, he asked, "Well, then-could I have a ruler?"

"A ruler?"

Hank forced a smile again. "The print's pretty fine. I forgot my glasses. I'd like to be able to read across."

The exasperated clerk opened a drawer, rummaged around, and slapped a ruler down on the desk. Hank went back to the stacks. He opened the book, placing the ruler not horizontally, but vertically, lining it up next to the OWNER column. Then he looked toward the snotty clerk-and coughed and swiftly ripped down the page, tearing out a strip, about two inches wide, containing the owner's names and property descriptions.

He then placed the book back where it belonged, and sauntered out.

* * *

Hank had rented a car for the trip, paying three thousand in deposit and nearly twelve hundred per day for the refurbished Shi off-roader. He'd loaded it up with a week's worth of food-dried jerky, trail mix, cactus water-and medicines, a full doctor's bag, as well as nearly two hundred rounds of .308 jacketed soft point for his sniper rifle and fifteen full magazines for the shotgun and the pistol. There was still plenty of room left over for the android and Val's gear.

Still, knowing what they were supposed to go out there and do would have helped a lot. A pity, then, that Cartius was nowhere to be seen.

Hank kicked the tires again. Above him, the clouds hung, heavy, pregnant with rain. He checked his watch again. Eight-fifty-two. A distant, tinny ring of floated by; Hank answered the phone in his house.

"Hank Redstone."

It was Drew Corvus. "Hank, just wanted to apologize for what happened a couple nights back."

Hank asked, "For what?" There were so many things that his ex-colleagues had bungled, he was genuinely confused.

Drew responded, ingratiatingly. "Well, our tacticals-I just heard they didn't get there until nearly forty minutes after you made the call. I-I'm real sorry, Hank. We here all thought you were trying to be a hero... I think a few of us are getting it now, that you were just trying to scare the dispatcher shitless so she'd call out the cavalry."

Alarm bells went off in Hank's head. Drew was never this nice. "Apology accepted, Lieutenant Corvus."

Drew dropped a little bit of the act, hardened his tone back to his normal voice. "Anyhow, I just wanted to remind you about our Thursday appointment. And also, just for departmental paperwork, I'll need to know your whereabouts for the upcoming week."

"My whereabouts?" Hank paused for a second, then felt a tap on his shoulder. Val was standing right behind him, furiously shaking her head. _Did she get augmented hearing, too?_, Hank thought, before returning to the call: "I'll probably be getting drunk and buying a screw in Palatine with the money Evelyn's giving me. Has the Vice Squad met its arrest quota this month? Because if not, I can help them out."

Hank heard a chuckle, not Drew's voice-probably Roy's. Drew made a shushing noise, then replied. "Alright, Mr. Redstone. I'll put you down as bedridden from 'residual mental trauma'-comes with free psychotherapy. You want it?"

Another tap on the shoulder. Val pecked him on the cheek as he turned around. "Uh, no. Thanks for the hall pass, though. You can also tell the boys I'm using the therapist-make 'em think I'm less of a crazy Courier Six."

Drew laughed. "Hank... we never thought you were that much of a badass-but the crazy part, definitely." A pause, the sound of a pencil scribbling, then- "See you on Thursday." And a click.

The highway out of Shady was freshly paved. The Shi off-roader came with a tape player right in the dash, and the rental company had even thrown a few holotapes in for free. The smooth, surgically-restored voice of Dean Domino played out over the car stereo. Val had fallen asleep already. Cartius sat in the back, head scanning back and forth as he tracked passing objects. Occasionally, the android would hum back a line of melody, but always out of tune.

They were midway through the B-side of the second tape when Hank finally asked him what was wrong. "Hey Cartius-"

Cartius made a small buzzing sound, then ended his singing. "Yes, Mr. Redstone?"

"Call me Hank. Anyhow-if you're an android with a voice chip, how come you keep singing things off-key?"

"My voice chip was damaged in the battle with the Shi. I have not been able to procure a replacement."

"Oh. Sorry to hear."

"Don't be sorry. The damage sustained was purely cosmetic, and the sacrifice helped achieve our primary mission."

"And what was that mission?"

"Termination of all key members of the Shi botanical research team."

Hank hands jerked a little, briefly swerving the off-roader over into the next lane. A car horn blared in protest. "What? Why? I thought you guys were playing defense?"

"Well, yes, partially-you see, our Elder had us on a long-running mission to sabotage Shi research into their anti-radiation plants. Based on my study of prior espionage cases involving pre-War nations and the NCR, I estimate that eighty-five percent of the Shi rationale for attacking us was directly due to my mission."

"So you guys kept poking them in the eye until they threw a sucker punch?"

"Your idiomatic use is correct. They responded with a simultaneous surprise attack on every Brotherhood installation between San Francisco and Old Portland."

Hank shook his head. "Good grief. And here we were in the NCR, thinking the steel knights were all geniuses."

The android's voice changed slightly. Hank imagined he could feel tinge of injured pride. "Our Elder had projected that it would lead to unsustainable overpopulation of the Wasteland within three generations, leading to a near-certainty that communities would go to war over dwindling non-food resources, if the project was allowed to succeed."

Hank looked directly at the android in the rearview mirror. "So why didn't you just tell 'em that?"

Then another change. Now the voice sounded almost... mournful. "We did, and they disagreed. We had no choice. When the hostilities finally began, my knowledge of their research project allowed us to quickly identify the right individuals for targeted kinetic operations."

"Jesus... guess war never changes."

Cartius was silent for a moment, then spoke, slower this time. "I would say that the result was better than what we expected. We expected the Shi to retaliate by firing the heirloom nuclear weapons from their submarine, but in the end they actually agreed to change course-after looting and burning three quarters of our Northern California facilities."

Hank nodded thoughtfully. "And that's how come the Shi now make every single microchip from the Boneyard to New Vegas."

The android nodded back. "Yes, you could say that. Crimson and the other mining houses dig up raw materials, and Shi, The Gun Runners, other manufacturers process it. This combination is... to use the idiom... the backbone of NCR strength." The android then returned to its soft humming for a while, before flatly stating that he would be devoting all processing power to calculating a problem for another few hours as his voice slowly faded into silence.

The next half hour passed by uneventfully. Six years ago, he and Drew had taken the same path back in, but it had been dirt, and they had ridden brahmin carts. Now he was sitting in a converted off-roader powered by a fission battery, driving on newly paved asphalt.

"Guess the war was good for the NCR, too," he muttered. He leaned forward, wiped a smudge off the inside of the windshield with one sleeve, then peered through it, at the line of industrial complexes parallel to the Long 15. The windshield caught the facility lights and twisted them, and it occured to Hank that these were the stars under which he voyaged, his destiny spelled out in a constellation of cheap halogen lamps.

They passed a neon giant waving a cowboy hat with one arm and pointing at a diner with the other. Val's eyes fluttered open. "Hank? Did we just pass Smiling Cal?"

Hank shrugged. "The neon statue? Yeah, I think that was it. Why, you seen it before?"

Val nodded. "When I was on the back of that plague wagon. They tossed my folks in a ditch nearby."

Hank reached over and squeezed her hand. "Want to stop and pay our respects?"

Val shook her head. "Let's do that on our way back, Hank. I don't think I can hold my head up in front of them yet."

He briefly took his eyes of the road. "Why?"

"Because I haven't figured out what killed them yet."

"I thought you said Floramin killed them, in an accident."

"Yeah, but why-Hank? Why were we all taken to a secret facility instead of being treated afterwards? Why did they cover it all up?"

Hank thought back to that night along the reservoir. "You said Von Metzger happened in the Westin Hills?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

"Funny, that's where I got poisoned."

She froze. "What?"

Hank blinked twice. "Is it a surprise? I thought you were following me night and day."

She shook her head. "Well, I couldn't keep up with you after you left that Legion boy."

Hank nodded. "Well, anyhow, they're still dumping Floramin out of there. I got caught in a drainage channel when they started a round of it."

Val was still shaking her head, vigorously. "Something is very wrong here. I thought Von Metzger was completely shut down-"

"-Relax, maybe it was another complex. The hills are pretty big, you know." Hank shifted the off-roader into another gear, passed a truck carrying what appeared to be a giant rocket, warning labels slapped on every flat surface.

Val was too engrossed in her line of logic to notice the subtle jab. "No, no-Von Metzger was the first plant they built up there-and they shut down all the other projects once they realized Westin Hills shale would sponge up and keep leaking the Floramin for months."

Hank shifted in his seat. "So they've restarted production at Von Metzger. What's so special about that?"

Val drew in a breath, tried to keep her voice steady. "Inkay-he always had a hunch that McLafferty chose the Von Metzger site on purpose."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Yes-he thought McLafferty wanted it to leak on purpose. That's what he told me, that final night in the Palatine Hill Suites."

"-But if Floramin is so valuable, why would a businessman like McLafferty want to build a field that constantly bleeds the product into the ground?"

"The bigger question is, why would he restart it, even after everyone knew the field leaked like a sieve?"

They were both silent for a while. Hank spoke first. "Let's wait until Cartius wakes up. I think he might know."

Val looked over at the android. "I'm not sure. Charles was the one that reprogrammed him... by imprinting his own mental patterns on the circuitry. If Charles couldn't figure it out-"

"-Inkay would actually be my first choice in terms of playing 'twenty questions' right now." Val looked confused a second. Hank continued, "I think he did figure it out, and that's why he was murdered. We're actually pretty lucky here."

"You're right." Then Val reached over, gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Let's ask after we tuck in for the night, hmm?"

"Gotta find a place that won't get us killed first."

* * *

A brightly lit auto court ten miles east of the Mojave Outpost; Hank, Val, and Cartius checked in. Hank circled the car out back, behind the buildings, and parked parallel to the back door of their room.

The motel was horseshoe-shaped, a dozen semi-attached bungalows, rocky foothills against the back of them-no rear approach possible. The courtyard was loose gravel covered with twigs, paper debris, empty beer bottles-footsteps would crunch, tires would crack wood and glass. There was only one access-the dirt path they had driven in on-and anyone who wanted a potshot would have to trek thick timber to do so. Hank was satisfied.

They lit a campfire outside, roasting a pair of foot-long skewers, a pattern of bloatfly sliders and prickly pear fruit threaded up end-to-end on each. Hank sat down, began thumbing through a chronicle of the Mojave War entitled _Viva New Vegas_. Val began emptying the burlap sacks of ammunition, arranging the magazines and power cells in nice, neat rows along the ground. Cartius made beeping noises.

Dusk finished its act, and the Mojave moon, big and blue, took center stage. At another, the tunes of a harmonica played-a Legion tune. Hank glanced over, saw an ex-Legionnaire, instantly recognizable from the faded armor, drawing a single potato out of an old stewpot, slicing it into pieces for his two children and wife. Val looked over, too, and then looked back at Hank.

Val led him forward. Hank followed, awkwardly, trying not to show the pain from her deathgrip on his wrist. In the other hand, he held a sack. The man and woman looked up, faces dusty, hollow, hungry.

Val smiled and spoke. "Here, take 'em. They're free." Then she threw a look at Hank.

Hank's hands were jerky, hesitant. Val finally laughed and wrenched the bag away, spilling out an onion. Val continued. "Enough for a stew. Just char the beef beforehand."

The Legionnaire nodded, a broad smile of rememberance coming to his face. His wife reached in the sack, eyes briefly widening as she withdrew a slab of Brahmin meat wrapped in wax paper.

As they walked away, Val looked at Hank. "How did that feel?"

Hank shook his head. "Terrible."

She giggled a little. "Come on. The war's been over for six years now."

The harmonica sounded out now, playing a cheerier tune. Hank glanced over, watched the two kids tossing the onion back and forth and laughing. He picked up a skewer and nibbled at the meat. Val was a good barbecuer, but his appetite refused to cooperate.

She gently kicked his foot. "You've got to learn to let it go."

"Can't." Hank looked down, tracing an outline around one of the rocks in the sand with a twig. "I'm haunted."

"Look, we just passed the secret mass grave of forty Legion refugees back there." Val picked up one of the skewers, tearing into the bloatfly meat with gusto. "Two of them were my parents. If anyone should be haunted by ghosts, it should be me, not you."

Hank looked up, at her. She was still busy munching. Hank let her finish, then spoke. "You can find redemption, though. Hell, even Charles Robert Inkay can find redemption. But I can't. Not for what I did." He looked away, at the family again. Steam was rising from the stewpot, the pleasant smell of onion, broc flower, and jalapeno floating in the night air. The woman leaned against her husband, while the children were asleep, one head on each lap. The ex-Legionnaire saw him looking over and raised his harmonica in greeting, like it was a pitcher of beer. Hank looked down again.

Val replied, "Don't tell me you're feeling sorry for killing a bunch of Caeser-ites. Even I think that's a good thing."

Hank picked up the rock, began tossing it from one hand to another. "It wasn't that-" Then he looked down again. "Come on, let's get inside. We still have to talk to Cartius."

* * *

"You ready?"

Cartius nodded. They plugged him into the fission battery, looked away as two bright sparks flew off the junction point. Cartius gave a painful-sounding beep, then nodded again.

"Processing modules power level at 50%... 60%... 70%..."

While Cartius loaded up his internal software, Hank took out his dog-eared detective's notebook. Val glanced at him nervously.

"You sure this will work?"

Hank shrugged. "Well you said you've never juiced his CPU up to full power before. Maybe he can figure out what's going on behind all this."

"...100%." Cartius raised his head. "Hello. Haven't felt this way in a while. I see you've attached me to alternate source of power."

Hank replied. "Right-tell me, what does that let you do?"

The android still sounded the same, but Hank could tell that he spoke more quickly now. "I can now rewrite my operating software, and perform projections of future events with increased accuracy. I can also now access my institutional motives and analysis suite."

Hank and Val looked to each other. Val spoke first. "Load up the motives suite."

"Understood." A pause. "Completed. Please describe to me the situation you wish to analyze."

"Hank here was poisoned by Floramin at Von Metzger. He was in a drainage channel when they released unprocessed Floramin through it. Based on his description of the glow within the production field, it seems like the site has recently been reactivated. Who would be behind this?"

The android's face scrunched for a moment. Hank never imagined this expression was even possible. "Access to memory blocks 8BA4 and 8BA5 denied. Firmware limitation."

Hank shrugged. "Val, what does that mean?"

The robot interrupted. "It means that the programmer who wrote my firmware blocked any inquiries which might access these memory blocks."

Val raised an eyebrow. "Charles? But why?"

Hank was silent for a moment, then said: "Well, now you have sufficient energy to rewrite your own operating software. Can you erase those blocks?"

"Processing... complete. Memory blocks erased. Beginning analysis: A range of motives are possible for restarting Von Metzger. These are the following actors and their likelihood of involvement:  
Charles Inkay, former Chief of the Natural Resources Department, 99%  
Thomas McLafferty, Senior Senator from The Hub and President and Chief Executive Officer of Crimson Caravans and Mines, 99%  
Cassandra Moore, Senior Senator from the Mojave, 91%  
Chi-Chien Lee, Senior Senator from San Franciso and Chairman of the Qin Shih-Huang Technologies Group, informally known as the Shi, 89%  
Ted Gunderson, Junior Senator from Redding, 84%  
General James Hsu, Commanding Officer of the Mojave Occupation Forces, 75%  
Dennis Crocker, President of the New California Republic, 72%  
Aravind Rajaratnam, Lead Designer for the Gun Runners, 71%  
Joachim Van Graff, Boss of the Van Graff Syndicate, 65%  
Benjamin Wright, Boss of the Wright Syndicate, 60%  
Cliff Baxter, Senior Senator from the Boneyard, 56%  
The King, Mayor of New Vegas, 52%  
... and three hundred and twenty-six other actors with levels of involvement from twenty to fifty percent."

Hank and Val sat there, dumbfounded. Hank spoke. "Write out the list." He tore out a sheet from his notbeook, then handed it to the android, who used a laser scanner to burn the words into the paper. Hank had to hand the robot three more sheets before all was done.

When they finished reading the names, Hank and Val could barely move. "Jesus Christ. Everyone who is anyone in the NCR is on this list. But why would all of them want to leak Floramin into the wasteland? It makes no sense."

Cartius spoke up. "The damage incurred to the Metzger production field in the accident means the production quantity there is only one-fifth of what is was before. Any leak from there is not large enough to threaten a major population center. Hence no one will feel harmed by it. However, slowly leaking Floramin allows for a safe, effective way to test what sort of localized environmental conditions would encourage or retard its growth, which allows for optimization of future production and an increase in the food supply. Therefore every individual listed has an incentive to support this experimentation. Indeed, it is likely that was the original reason why the Westin Hills were selected as a production site."

Val looked at the android with ice-cold eyes. "You mean... it's true? They built Von Metzger on purpose? To spill poison into the countryside? To kill my tribe?" Her hands were clenched, knuckles white, wrists shaking. "And Charles? He was behind all this?"

"To my knowledge, Charles Inkay was the originator of the theory of subsurface migration and reproduction of Floramin organisms. However, they also tested different ways to boost yield. McLafferty and Inkay were the chief proponents of the possibility of not only growing Floramin within controlled production environments, but releasing it into the wild as well-I can cite several classified academic papers to support this assertion."

Val's face began to twist up. Hank watched out of a corner of his eye. He slowly put his hand on her wrist. "In order to calculate the limits of exposure however, they needed a human test population. This testing included a likely intentional release from the Von Metzger production field to coincide with the passage of refugee traffic six years ago. While I do not have access to the internal memoranda, the simultaneous failure of three different backup systems at Von Metzger means the probability of accidental release is under one in twenty million."

Suddenly, Val lifted her head up towards the ceiling and screamed. "Charles! You bastard! You son-of-a-bitch! How could you! You knew. You knew they were there and you killed them, all of them." The girl unsheathed her forearm blades and slashed at the android. Hank pushed it out of the way, down into the bed. Pain shot through Hank's arm as one of the edges drew a cut across the tip of a finger. Hank grabbed onto her with his other hand, gritted his teeth. Val continued screaming. "And I trusted you. I trusted you when you said it was an accident, when you said it was because the rocks under the field gave way. When you said that you were doing everything you could to-"

Hank interrupted her. "Val. Stop. Inkay took care of you-"

"He only took care of me because I was a goddamned experimental result! Because I was somehow special, the only one to live through the disaster-"

Hank shut up. Then, slowly: "Val, if Charles just viewed you as a result, why would he ever let you go? Why would he send you caps, and books, and guns, afterwards?"

Val shook her head. "I don't care. I'll never forgive him." Then, looking down. "Oh my goodness, are you hurt?"

Hank shrugged. "It's not a desperate situation."

Val began to move for a medkit. "I'm so-I'm so sorry, I didn't mean-"

Cartius interrupted. "There is one name of note which has a sub 3% probability of involvement."

Val replied quickly as she dug around for a bandage. "Who? And why?"

"Due to individual preferences that do not align with exponential population growth and the end of the frontier-the individual commonly known as Courier Six, Junior Senator from the Mojave."

Hank winced as Val rubbed alcohol all over the wound. "Well-agh!-I guess now we know who to talk to next." Val finished dressing the wound. Hank looked at it for a second, admiring her handiwork. "The Mojave. New Vegas. Guess I'm just coming home again."


	6. Running Away, Again

**Chapter 6: Running Away, Again**

"Hank, wake up."

Val was straddling him. The moon was still up outside. Hank rubbed his eyes. "What... whatsit?"

"Cabrioni is here." Hank sat bolt upright. "Relax, I think he's only brought fifteen or sixteen other guys." She smiled. Hank had a hard time telling whether she was being sarcastic. "I'll be out with the rifle. You hold the house. Okay?" And then, up out the balcony, an ebony blur against the moonlit night.

He dragged himself out of bed, walked to the balcony of the bungalow. There was an olive drab army truck parked where the Legion family had been making its campfire. A new arrival. A late arrival. Hank crawled back into the room, dug around the duffel bag for his shotgun. He fingered the oiled, gleaming barrel, then looked at the moonlight, cut into a square by the window.

It wouldn't do. He'd get himself shot this way. So he dug around for a pair of black socks, found them, and put them on, double-layered, over the gunmetal gray. Then he poured a bottle of cactus water over them-to make sure the fabric wouldn't catch fire too quickly from the heat of the barrel. Tucking two fat drum magazines into his waistband of his pyjamas, he stepped out onto the balcony, crouched low, body partially obscured by a large flowerpot.

Hammer cocked, sighting enemy. Hank saw two men-one fat brown suit, one skinny with a gray hat-walk into the alley between the bungalows. The other men fanned out; quick footsteps, flipping through dumpsters, over fences, past hedges. Under the gray hat was a red eye, a nightvision scanner.

A finger on the trigger, a make on the skinny guy: clown-like two tone shoes, the rattle of a butterfly knife. The fat man, closer-Lee Cabrioni, .44 magnum at the ready, flashlight dancing up and down the alleyway.

Hank held his breath, triggered a spread. Skinny man caught buckshot and flew, covering Cabrioni-knocking him back. Wild shots in response, ricochets, scaring some rats helter-skelter from the walls; then a click, empty magazine. Hank heard voices from inside the room; let fly into the plywood, screams as splintered wood chips and case-hardened buckshot touched something soft.

Cabrioni reloaded. Another volley of blind .44 magnum blasts-then a lead slug's deafening roar, an arm flying off the shoulder socket, landing somewhere in the field behind. Hank's ears were going. He almost couldn't hear Cabrioni scream.

Back to the window. Hank ran along the balcony, entered through the bathroom window, kicked the door leading back to the bedroom. Sitting ducks, crouched at the edge of the stairs, facing the balcony entrance-two men, three triple-aught rounds close in.

The two blew up; glass and blood covered three more men racing down the hall. Hank slid through the bedroom door, carpet nearly igniting from the friction, fired at three sets of legs pressed together. His free hand flailed, caught a revolver off a dead man's waistband.

Shrieks from the parking lot; running feet on gravel. Hank dropped the shotgun, stumbled to the wall. Over to the three men, smelling blood-one point-blank revolver headshot apiece, just to be sure.

Thumps in the stairwell; two shadows with plasma rifles. Hank yelled, "We got him!," heard answering cheers, saw arms and legs advancing up the steps. He picked up a piece off the closest dead man, not even looking at the weapon, and let fly. It was a Laser RCW on full automatic: trapped targets, plaster chips exploding, dry wood igniting.

Over the bodies, into the 1st floor living room. The front door stood open; two full magazines still stacked neatly beneath a shattered window. A strange thump-Hank saw a man spread prone, aiming from behind the sofa.

He threw himself to the floor, kicked, missed. The man got off a shot-close; Hank grabbed a piece of glass, leaped, slashed: the neck, the face, the man screaming, shooting-wide misses. Hank slit his throat, crawled over and toed the door shut, grabbed the plasma rifles and just plain breathed.

The fire spreading: cooking up bodies, rats; the front door his only way out. "How many more men standing trigger?", he thought.

Shots.

From the courtyard: heavy rounds, knocking out wall chunks. The shake, rattle, and roll of a light machinegun. Hank caught one in the leg, another grazed his back, kissing his spine. He hit the floor, the shots kept coming-face down, he heard the door crack open, wood splinters showering his back.

No more shots.

Hank tucked the two plasma rifles under his chest, spread himself deadman style. Seconds dragged: four men walked in holding silenced 9mm automatics. Whispers: "Finally got him"-"Bonus time"-"He still breathing?" Through the doorway, Lee Cabrioni not one of them, footsteps.

Kicks in his side, panting, sneers. A foot went under him. The voice was nasally: "Crazy fucker."

Hank jerked the foot: the nasally man toppled backward. Hank then spun around, guns akimbo-close range, all hits. Four men went down: Hank got a topsy-turvey view: the courtyard, olive drab truck pulling out hurriedly, the driver really flooring it. The smell of meat flash-boiled into goo. Then, behind him. "Still breathin', I see."

Lee Cabrioni stepped through the embers, dressed in Black Ranger armor. Hank saw him point a caravan shotgun at Cartius with his remaining left arm-triggered a spread, the android's face disappearing. "Lee, you came prepared."

"I had to prepare-to kill a Frumentarius. And you're going to meet Caesar."

Then the whispering death. This time, here were more than two pieces to pick up.

* * *

Hank gunned the motor of the Shi off-roader and started heading for the bright lights of New Vegas. No sense in staying at the auto court, now that their cover was blown. Hank picked up Val about three hundred yards out from the motel, let her take the wheel. She threw her gauss rifle on the dashboard; he shifted to the passenger seat, and began trying to patch his leg up.

Cartius was babbling to himself when Val switched him on, so they left him off. She placed her hand on the gauze wrap. "Does it hurt?"

"A little. But it isn't so bad once you pack healing powder into the wound."

Val turned, reached into the doctor's bag, and grabbed a small foil pack of med-x. Hank instinctively grabbed the steering wheel.

"Here, take these."

"No. I don't." Hank took the foil pack from her hand, place it back into the bag.

"Why?" Val grimaced as she pushed on the gearshift. Hank gave her a helping hand. They passed another of the long missile trucks.

"Bad memories."

She giggled. "Really? You? An addict? I can't imagine that."

Hank shrugged, turned his head toward the passenger-side window. "Wasn't me."

"Someone else?"

Hank nodded.

"What were the bad memories?"

Hank turned back towards Val. "I thought I was keeping someone from being hurt, and actually I ended up making sure they were hurt."

Val tsked slightly. "Cherchez la femme." Hank pretended not to understand the idiom. Val translated the phrase, slowly, a slight grin of embarassment creeping up her cheeks. "Was there a woman involved?"

Hank smiled sheepishly. "Of course."

Val asked the next question in a quiet hush, almost a whisper. "Is she dead?"

Then Cartius gave a series of angry beeps. Hank took the opportunity to dodge the question and change the subject. "Who were they?"

Val shrugged. "I dunno. I saw them come in on that truck, just knew they were trouble, so I found my rifle and then found you."

Hank shook his head. "I don't think we were the primary target. Cartius-Cabrioni could have wasted me, but he shot the robot first. Someone thought Cartius was worth losing a dozen men over."

Val cocked her chin toward the notches on her rifle. "One and a half-dozen."

"Yeah." Hank fingered the rough indentations in the smooth carbon fiber stock. The slot for the microfusion cell was still warm to the touch. He began thinking out loud. "Who, though? I doubt the Department was involved, even though they hired Cabrioni. If they lost a dozen men like that the press would be all over them." Hank scrunched up his forehead. "There are only a few folks in the entire NCR who would be able to tolerate losses like that. Crimson, the Shi, not the Ranger Vets, there aren't that many of them."

"Dear, you think too much. Just stop thinking, and don't stop fighting until we get to the truth." Val slowed down, let a brahmin truck pass.

Hank smiled. "Thinking's what got me into this mess. It's what'll get me out, that's for sure."

Val smiled. "Us, Hank. Not you or me. Us."

Hank nodded. "I'll agree. If only because I'm under a life debt." Val chuckled and gave him what she felt was a friendly punch. Hank's arm was still sore five minutes later.

They passed a sign that said "Las Vegas, 55 miles." Val spoke up again, her tone was actually admiring for once. "For a sniper, you really knew how fight up close." Hank shrugged. Val went on, changed the subject. "So you think they don't want us to figure out what they're up to? With the Floramin dumping?"

Hank gave a flippant chuckle. "No, they don't care if we figure it out, so long as we're not breathing after we do." Val laughed with him.

But inside his head, Cabrioni's words were still rolling around like ice cubes in a glass of Nuka-Cola. _How did Cabrioni know about my past,_he thought.

When the war had ended, the first thing Hank had done was head for the Legion Safehouse in the southern Mojave hills. He'd found it unguarded, so he'd ransacked the place, looking for the Frumentarii records-then had chucked them into the campfire outside. The only other man who knew his secret had been Drew Corvus. But Drew had his own secrets in the war, and he wouldn't last too long if he was spilling them. Or was he also in trouble? For once, Hank almost didn't want to know.

The skyline of New Vegas cut through the morning sun like a row of jagged teeth, disappearing and reappearing through the mountains as if the entire horizon was the jaw of some enormous deathclaw. The off-roader approached a fresh metal sign that read "Welcome to Novac" in strips of white paint. Hank remembered the large dinosaur. It brought back more guilt. They were stopped on the outskirts of the city by a few men manning a small concrete blockhouse. A bearded man wearing a faded red beret approached them.

Val spoke. "Is there a problem?"

He peered into the vehicle. "No problem, miss-just letting you gentlefolk know that though that might be the Bear flag a-flutterin' in the breeze, this is the Mojave territory you're wanderin' in, and what we say goes around here." Then he stooped a bit lower, put hand to his forehead, squinted. "Say, that's a mighty nasty cut you got there. What happened?"

Hank looked at the man. He appeared to be thirty, thirty three, slightly stocky. A hunting rifle was hooked over one shoulder. "Gecko-I turned left, it came from the right-then... chomp chomp."

The man laughed a little. "Well, that's a drag. Name's Manny. There's medical supplies for sale at motel. You let me know if you need anything, alright?" Then waved them through.

"Didn't know that you guys would end up fighting so hard for the Mojave, only to end up giving it all away to a courier."

Hank shrugged. "Wasn't any of my business. I just followed orders."

"Well, I guess you guys got it all back with the treaty. But still, must have been a weird feeling, no?"

"I joined for food. I got to eat. Can't say I wasn't happy."

Val's eyes focused on something in the distance. "Speaking of food-" She pointed at a diner. Then they were inside, drinking coffee and eating fried cazador eggs with toast.

Alone in the corner, a man sat with the same red beret that Manny had worn. But this man's expression was rock hard, as far from friendly as one could get. The waitress walked over and handed the man a cup of black coffee, and then about fifty caps from the cashier box.

Val walked over and introduced herself. "Hi, we were just passing through here." No response. Val shrugged, turned to Hank, who shrugged in response.

She sat back down across from Hank. They were midway through their meal when Hank spoke up. "I think he's the mayor."

"Wh-what?"

"He's either the mayor collecting taxes, or a raider robbing the place. And given the fact that he's wearing the same 1st Recon Beret as Manny, he's probably the former."

Val was silent for a second. Then she replied, "Well, don't you think he might be able to hook us up with the Courier?"

"Six? Nah, I'm not even sure that guy could find him, let alone get him to meet us." Hank dunked some toast in the coffee.

"Why?"

"From what I remember-and this is from long ago, so it might have changed-Six really didn't like to do anything except wander." He chewed on the crispy bread.

"But he's a junior senator now. Doesn't that mean that he sits in an office all day, signs papers, that sort of thing?"

"Actually, no." It was the sniper in the red beret. He stood next to Val's side of the booth, wearing a white t-shirt and dark camo pants. The man's leathered hand removed his beret, then a pair of sunglasses. "Mind if I sit? Heard you guys talking about my boss."

Hank scooted over. "No, not at all." Val detected an undercurrent of tension flowing from Hank toward the other man. The other man didn't notice.

"I'm Boone. So I hear you want to meet him, is that right?"

Hank nodded. "Yep." Then Val spoke up. "I'm Lucia Valeria Eudocia. Call me Val for short. And this droopy thing is Hank Redstone. We're here to ask the Courier some questions about-"

Hank stepped on her foot. He had noticed that Boone was glaring at her, hard. "Ms. Eudocia. Were you Legion?"

Val stammered for a moment. "Y-yes. My parents were from Arizona. We came in on the Long 15 six years ago-I mean, not here, to the NCR-"

Boone cut her off. "I don't talk to Legion. Men, women, or children. Sorry for interrupting your breakfast." And with that, he stood up, gathered his beret and glasses, and began to walk away.

Val turned to Hank as Boone walked out the door. "What's with that guy?"

Hank shook his head. "Back when I served with the 173rd, we heard about this First Recon sniper whose wife was kidnapped by a Legion slaving party."

Val put her hand to her mouth. "That was him?"

Hank nodded. "The story gets worse."

"How much worse?"

"Sniped his wife through the head to keep her from being sold at auction." Hank finished his coffee. "She was pregnant, too."

Val sat there, dumbstruck. "I had no idea..."

Hank stood up, held her wrists for a second. "But it's all in the past now. Maybe not for him, but at least for the rest of us." Hank felt an icy tingle in his spine as he finished the sentence. Then he looked out the window. Boone was chatting with Manny, who was looking at the diner in a funny way. "Let's get outta here. I think they're talking about us."

Manny began walking towards the diner. Val squeezed Hank's wrist tightly. Hank didn't move.

Manny walked through the door, stopped a healthy distance from the couple. "Sorry about that, folks. Boss is just a little cranky, that's all." The bearded man adjusted his cap. "You might try looking in the Lucky 38-word is the Courier is back from another one of his quests. He also has an auto-doc up there, could take a look at your leg for you."

Hank nodded. Val began to drag him out the door. "Thanks, Manny. And tell Boone that we're sorry about Carla."

Manny threw Hank a look of puzzlement through the diner window. "Hey, man, how do you know-" But Val was already gunning the engine.

* * *

When they got to the Strip, the noontime sun was high in the sky. They parked along one of the cleaned-up Freeside streets. Hank paid one of the guards fifty caps to keep an eye on the car for them, promised him a hundred more if the car was still there when they got back.

As Hank caught up to Val, she threw him an accusatory glance. "Was that really necessary? You'll make him not care about anything unless someone pays him."

Hank smiled a bit. "A man's got to make a living. I never pass judgment on how he does that."

Val snorted, walked on.

They reached one of the gaudiest hotels on the Strip, the storied Lucky 38, the Tower of Babylon for the wastes. A multicolored spray of water emerged from a fountain, ran down and then under neon-lit glass steps leading to the entrance. Over the chatter of gamblers and the bubbling fountain pump, Hank and Val heard the sound of a sledgehammer against concrete.

They found a super mutant in the process of pounding a new plaque into the fountain. He looked up and wiped his brow, his work clothes dry in spite of the heat. Hank remembered a factoid from police forensic training-mutants didn't have sweat glands. The green giant put down the hammer and asked them politely what they were looking at.

Val responded. "Oh, nothing. You seem to be hard at work."

The mutant laughed a little. "Yeah, a favor for friend. This plaque isn't truth any longer." He dug around in the water, retrieved a brass object. "Lucky 38 no longer tallest building in Wasteland. New building in Shady Sands is taller."

Val nodded, shrugged at Hank. Hank was craning his neck to look all the way up to the very top of the Lucky 38. He spoke without tilting his head back down. "Eden Towers, the new home of Crimson Caravans and Mines." He lowered his head. "You have a nice day, pal." The mutant picked up the hammer again.

The rush of air-conditioning was counterbalanced by the sheer noise and bustle within the casino. Hank went for the balding floor manager. "Is the Courier in today?"

The manager's eyes were beady. He responded quickly, with a clipped voice. "Who are you and what is your business here?"

Val put a hand on the manager's shoulder. He began to blush. "This isn't about the casino, we just have some... questions to ask."

"Well, you'll have to make an appointment, I can't just let anyone up there." Then the manager glanced at her hand again, noted the porcelain fingers and burgundy nails, then glanced to her face, where Val was beaming her cutest, most innocent smile. "Although, if you want, I do know that he'll be available to chat in around half an hour or so. If you make it quick."

Val winked. "We'll be back."

* * *

Staring. That was what Val first noticed about the Courier. Six seemed to have eyes that followed her everywhere, no matter how she tried to position herself in the room. It reminded her of a gecko roasting over flames-the Courier's stare was the fire, and she was the unfortunate animal caught on the spit.

She glanced at Hank. Hank wasn't moving a muscle. In fact, he was staring back. Now her mental analogy changed to mantises, caught in some strange duel. She felt a desperate urge to say something, but the words failed to materialize in her throat.

Finally, something broke the silence. It was one of the junior senator's aides. He was a teenager, just a few years younger than Val. He glanced at the trio awkwardly as he nudged open the door, hesitated, then decided to continue.

"Senator. It's almost time for your next appointment, with the head scribe from the local Brotherhood Chapter, Veronica... Veronica..."

The Courier finished his sentence. "Santangelo. Tell her to wait outside." Then he poured out three glasses of scotch, motioned for Val and Hank to sit down. "So. Plata, e plomo?"

Val raised an eyebrow. "Pardon?"

Hank responded smoothly. "Verdad, Senor. Verdad."

The courier offered Hank a glass. Hank sipped quietly. The courier spoke again. "So if it is truth you want to know, why come to me?" He gulped his glass of rye. "All my advisors tell me I am a fool. Sometimes I think that may be the closest approximation of the truth."

Hank spoke quickly. "I know you've been wandering the wastes-and that you've done research of your own on Floramin. I need to know about that, and Arizona. What you've found out there." The courier didn't respond. Hank continued. "We think some members of the NCR government are testing and dumping large amounts of Floramin into the wild, to boost production. We've also heard that you're the only high official who wouldn't necessarily agree with this course of action." Still no response. "Look, we need help. We think you're the only one who could help us."

"And why, pray tell, would you need that? I am afraid the NCR would not authorize me to release that information or offer you any assistance. They might impeach me for that, and heaven knows a good NCR official should not do anything to get himself impeached." The courier refilled his glass of rye and drank it, again, in one gulp. Val wondered whether he was simply guzzling whisky out of the bottle when no one else was around.

Hank answered with a near chuckle. "Look. I know it was a raw deal that Moore and Crocker brought upon you. But don't let that get in the way of what matters here and now." He drew out the sheet of printed names from Cartius. "Take a look at this motives analysis we did-"

The Courier glanced over the pages, turning rapidly. "So?"

"Notice anyone's name missing?"

"So? Everyone in the NCR knows I'm a black sheep. Does it matter?"

"Doesn't it mean anything to you, that you might be the only one with the knowledge, the ability, and the incentives to actually do something about a project that could kill people?"

"No."

Val spoke up this time. "But you-you're a goddamn hero, you fought at the Hoover Dam-" She ducked, narrowly dodging an empty whisky glass as it crashed into the bookshelf behind her. The aide rushed in with a look of concern.

The Courier ignored the aide. "I'll tell you what. I'm done being a hero. You want someone to solve your problems, you find someone else. Comprende, senorita?"

Hank and Val looked at each other. The aide tapped both of them on the shoulder, whispered that it might be best to leave now.

* * *

"I guess that didn't work."

They were sitting by the autodoc. Hank kicked his leg out again-just like new, he thought, feeling the splint, still smelling like antiseptics and healing powder.

Val continued. "So what do we do now? I mean, Cartius is shot, the Courier doesn't want to help..."

Hank began to dig around in his pockets. Val kept talking. "Maybe I should go and get Cartius fixed. You stay here and rest."

Hank kept digging, then felt something and stopped. "Wait, what?"

"I said, you should stay here and rest while I go fix Cartius."

Hank shrugged. "While you do that, I might have a lead to pursue."

Val nodded. "Okay. But-" and she kissed him on the forehead- "-stay safe, alright?"

Hank nodded.

* * *

Hank was holding up the list of land sales with one hand, trying to drive the off-roader with another. He did some quick mental mapping, then decided to pay a visit to one of the obvious holdouts on the list-an "E. Jenkins" that was surrounded by sold-out plots for miles in each direction.

The off-roader reached a fork in the road. There were a couple of mailboxes. Hank looked for the one labeled Jenkins, found it, and began a slow ascent.

As he did, he saw the tops of a line of bright green trees, coming more and more into view, row upon row of mutfruit and pinyon nut groves, their foliage heavy. The few structures in the distance were white-washed, and well kept, right down to the white paving stones that marked the pathway to the ranch house. Towering above it all was a huge metal Floramin tank.

Hank drove through a gate that had "NO TRESPASSING" and "KEEP OUT - PRIVATE PROPERTY" signs neatly printed on it, not bothering to slow down at all. Pulling to a halt in the road flanking the orchard lanes, Hank put the car in neutral, staring at the trees. In contrast to their wild wasteland cousins, these specimens were lush and beautiful, their heavy branches barely swaying in a light breeze.

Then a shotgun blast abruptly stripped bare the branches of the tree he'd been staring at.

Hank's face flinched. He looked behind himself. Riding on a Brahmin down the field in the direction he had just driven was a red-faced man in overalls. His hat blew off his head, but he didn't lose the shotgun he'd just used. Hank's lane of retreat denied, he gunned the car and took off down one of the orchard lanes.

The dirt lane was rough. As Hank neared the end of it, a younger man on a Bighorner blocked the exit.

Hank veered a sharp left, knocking a branch off one of the trees, heading down one of the cross-lanes. A scraggly dog began to run alongside the off-roader, nipping at the tires. Hank yelled at it, scaring it off.

Two farmers on foot, one using a crutch, the other a supermutant, ran down the lanes toward the dust trail the off-roader's tires were kicking above the trees.

The hide-and-seek chase between the two riders and the men on foot continued up and down through orchard lanes, until Hank's front tire and radiator were ruptured by another shotgun blast.

The off-roader veered through a stray pack of molerats, scattering them off, before smacking into a pinyon nut tree, showering Hank and the off-roader with a barrage of the seeds.

Hank immediately tried to get out through the branches covering the sides of the off-roader-then a tussle as he was yanked out by one of the younger farmers, a huge brute nearly twice his size. The crippled farmer began to bang Hank on the back with his crutch. The two of them managed to pound Hank to the ground within moments.

The older red-faced farmer with the shotgun and the man on a bighorner rode up. "All right, quit it! Quit it now! Search the man, see if he's armed."

Hank was hefted half off the ground as the two footbound farmers spun him around, going through his clothes. They tossed out a wallet, a silver cigarette case, keys-but no gun.

"I said see if he's armed, not empty his pockets."

The brute spoke, slowly. "-He... he ain't armed."

Hank leaned against the back of the off-roader as they set him down, breathing heavily.

The red-faced farmer spoke again. "All right, mister-who you with-Natural Resources Department, or the real estate office-"

Hank stood on wobbly legs, paused a moment to catch his breath. The crippled farmer poked him rudely in the back with his crutch. Hank turned sharply. "Get away from me!"

"Answer him!"

"Touch me with that thing again and you'll need a pair of them."

The supermutant gave Hank a shove. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

They were interrupted by the red-faced man. "I said cut it out! Give the man a chance to say something."

Hank looked up, then reached down for his wallet. "The name's Hank Redstone-I'm a private investigator and I'm not with either one."

"Then what are you doing out here?"

"Client hired me to see..." Hank panted, catching his breath. "...Hired me to see, whether or not the Natural Resources Department has been fertilizing your land."

"Fertilizing my land?" The man's voice went up a notch, exploding in anger. "The department's been sending you people to blow up my fertilizer tanks! Kill my livestock, threw poison down three of my wells-I call that a funny way to fertilize-who'd hire you for a thing like that?"

Hank reached into his pocket-then looked on the ground and found the contract. He picked it up.

"Mrs. Evelyn Inkay-"

The supermutant spoke up. "Inkay? That's the son of a bitch who's done it to us."

Hank responded with a sneer. "Inkay's dead-you don't know what you're talking about, you dumb mutie-"

The supermutant threw a right hook. Hank was ready, dodged, answered with a kick to the crotch, then a knee to the jaw after he was doubled up, and finally a blow to the back of the head. But Hank did not notice the crippled farmer taking careful aim behind him. Hank was knocked to the ground by the crutch and went to sleep, sound as a baby.


	7. Plata, Plomo, Verdad

**7. Plata, Plomo, Verdad**

"You think he's still alive?"

Hank was back with his third partner. Jeremy or something was his name. A slim kid from the Boneyard, who'd grown up hunting rats for fun in the catacombs beneath the ruined city. They were looking at the Decanus of the contubernia who'd just tried assaulting their position. A well-placed shot had nailed the point man, and a remote C4 charge had hit the rear three in the column. The rest had been easy pickings.

Hank shrugged. "Maybe." He gave the Decanus another kick. A mumble, a trickle of blood out of the corner of one mouth.

Jeremy leaned down. His face turned mean. "Fucker's still breathing."

"Yeah? Well Legion armor is good, I'll give 'em that." Hank squatted down to join Jeremy. Pushing his fingers through the dying man's shoulder pads, he could feel the fading pulse through arteries ripped open by a .308 round. When he pulled the fingers back, they were sticky with drying blood and sand.

"Should we take him back?"

Hank glanced down the pathway through which the raiding party had been advancing. "There's still a few frag mines covering us down there, right?" Jeremy nodded. Hank picked up one of the Decanus' arms. "Then let's go."

By some miracle, the man began to get better as he was being carried back to Forlorn Hope. Or maybe he'd just been faking it. Either way, he was heavy, and as soon as he could walk, Hank and Jeremy were taking turns prodding him along with their rifles.

They learned his name was Drusius Corvus, First Decanus in the Sixth Century of Seventieth Cohort of the Fifth Legion. He'd been born near Old Tucson, and his complexion suggested a Mexican ancestry. He insisted they call him Drew, which Hank and Jeremy refused to do, calling him 'Fuckface' instead.

On the second night, the three men had sat down to cook a meal next to one of the steep bluffs lining the Colorado River. Drew offered to teach them how to cook a stew if they would just untie his hands. So they did-while tying his by the neck and leg to a nearby tree. There, leashed like a dog, Drusius taught Hank and Jeremy how to make Legionnaire's Stew. Even Jeremy had to admit, it was pretty good.

That night, as Hank stood watch, Drew began to speak. "I've seen you before." Hank froze. "You were with the first cohort, first Legion-I remember. You were one of the standard-bearers during the Boulder City anniversary."

Hank turned slowly, careful not to wake the other man. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The decanus laughed. "Heh heh, what do you think, I'm going to run around telling the profligates? Nah, your secret's safe with me." Then, he added, in a tone almost too friendly. "Glad to know we're on the same side."

Hank repeated himself. "I said, I don't know what you're talking about." Then, he added, with emphasis: "I'm not wearing a mask for the Bull anymore. You can tell Vulpes to go fuck himself."

Drew's laugh was bitter. "What, you turning on us now? Living with the profligates make you soft? I don't believe this."

Hank leaned in close and yanked on the rope around Drew's neck. Drew's eyeballs bulged a little and he gasped for breath. "I'm done. You hear me? Out of the game. I'm on my own side now." Then let go of the rope, Drew gasping for breath.

"There ain't" -pant- "ain't no such thing as your own side, Frumentarius." Then Drew spit on Jeremy, and repeated a bit louder. "Frumentarius!"

Jeremy came to, his eyes blinking away the caked desert sand. "Wh-what? Whatsit?" He saw Hank trying to choke the Decanus to death. "Hey! What are you doing?"

Hank spoke quickly. "Little bastard was trying to escape." He kept his hands around Drew's neck, keeping the Decanus from speaking.

"Huh? His legs are still tied."

Hank looked down, his face flushing. Jeremy caught the look of guilt. "What's going on here?"

Drew wriggled free of Hank's grasp. "This man, he's a Frumentarius."

Hank reached over to choke Drew again, but Jeremy grabbed his wrist. "Let. Him. Speak."

Drew spoke quickly, hurried breaths punctuating every other word. "Ever notice how every single one of your patrols since the first one has gotten ambushed? Or how every single one of this man's sniping partners has gotten killed?"

Jeremy turned, a look of ice on his face. "Is this true, Hank? Is this true?"

Hank stood, looked guiltily from one man to the other. "I'm out of the game, Jeremy. I'm going straight now. That's why this bastard's accusing me." Then he added, weakly. "I swear."

Jeremy launched a left hook into Hank's face, knocking him down. "You BASTARD!" Then, while Hank was down, he began brutally beating him. "Go straight-I'll let you go straight-let you learn to walk straight-motherfucker-" Another series of punches. "They start by making you crawl in Alcatraz prison, then bend over-maybe after ten years you'll learn to walk straight again-" Hank made no effort to defend himself.

While Jeremy had been delivering a beatdown on Hank, Drew had managed wriggle out of the neck leash. He lunged forward and grabbed Hank's combat knife, breaking both of his still-leashed ankles in the process. In spite of lying on the ground at an awkward angle, the pain shooting up his legs, and having only one good arm, Drew's throw was deadly accurate. The tip slipped neatly between Jeremy's shoulderblades, the Boneyard kid slumping onto Hank's chest, coughing out blood.

Hank scrambled to his feet shock. "What the hell... what the..."

Over the next ridge, both men heard voices, indistinct, sounding like an NCR patrol. Drew was lying on the ground, smiling. "Now we're both in the same boat, profligate."

Hank immediately shoved Jeremy's body over the edge of the bluffs. "No." Then he leaned, inches from Drew's face. "What's to keep me from killing you, too?"

Drew pointed over at the rising cloud of dust behind the ridge, then to the bluffs next to them. "Lucky for me, a patrol is coming up. What you gonna do-kick me down there along with him? I'll scream 'Frumentarius' like crazy, and once they find both of our bodies, you'll look guilty as hell."

The patrol drew closer. Hank slumped. Drew continued. "Nah. You tell 'em-tell 'em that the Legion had me tied up and was about to kill me. You tell 'em that your partner this time was unlucky, just like last time. And then-" -Drew smiled his smile that made Hank uncomfortable- "-you'll no longer be on your own side. I'll join it."

Then, suddenly, Drew's face adopted Evelyn's pained, cloistered expression. "Is he still alive?"

"What?"

The voice, again, louder, from around him now. "Are you still there? Hank?"

* * *

Hank awoke with a start, grimacing. Each hearbeat shot pain from his middle of his spine to the back of his neck. He found himself looking into Evelyn's sea-green eyes. She was staring with a look of mild exasperation mixed with concern down at Hank. He lifted his head, found he was lying in the screened in-porch of the farmhouse. The farmer's wife, the cripple, the mutant, and the dog were also there, along with a teary-faced Val. A palpable air of slight embarassment hung about.

The farmer's wife had set tea out. Evelyn handed him a glass. Hank drank it, choked a little. Val rushed forward, held the glass until Hank finished it, a fresh wave of tears rising from her eyes. Evelyn looked slightly amused, reached out, ran her fingers through Val's hair in a motherly gesture.

Hank finally croaked out the obvious question. "What's going on?"

The farmer spoke. "You didn't look too good, so we thought we better call your employer."

The detective checked his watch. Miraculously, it was intact. It was six-forty. "In the evening?" Hank asked to no one in particular. The small crowd gathered around him nodded. Hank felt the back of his head, his expression getting a little pale as he felt the clotted blood.

His wife, a stout, matronly lady in her early fifties, looked accusingly at her husband, then turned to Hank. "You've been out cold for a day." She leaned forward, wiped his face down with a damp towel. "I'm Mrs. Boise, and this is my husband. We're sorry about what happened."

Val interrupted-"You better be sorry"-then shut up as Hank threw her a look.

Evelyn led Val out to her car, the cream colored Chryslux. Mrs. Boise accompanied them-along with the supermutant, who was carrying a crate of something. Hank walked over to the well. The supermutant immediately set down the crate, ran over, and hauled up a bucket, then began to clumsily try and wipe Hank down.

"Alright, alright, it's fine, I can do it myself. Thanks." The mutant stood aside. Hank finished cleaning up and joined Evelyn at her car.

The farmer then spoke up. "Look here, if it's all the same with you, we'll get your car patched up-If you'll tell me what your suit runs you, I'll make good on that, too, Mr. Redstone."

Val spoke up. "It's okay, Mr. Boise. We'll take care of it."

The farmer turned to Val. "It's just that they're after everybody out here, tearing up our irrigation ditches-trying to make our land worthless so they can pick it up for twenty-five caps an acre-"

Hank, Evelyn, and Val nodded. The farmer continued. "Anyway-Bud here is sorry, too. He wants to give you something to take back with you."

Hank looked at the mutant, who was now holding the huge crate again. It was full to the brim with ripe-smelling purple mutfruit. "Thanks, Bud."

They hired a tow truck labeled Tejada-"Didn't know Raul Tejada did tow trucks too," Val commented-then piled into the Chryslux for the drive back to New Vegas.

Val continued. "Thanks for coming, anyhow." Evelyn shot her an awkward glance. Hank looked between the two women amusedly. He pulled out a cigarette case, offered one to Evelyn, who refused. Val threw him a jealous look, then Hank guiltily put the case back in his jacket.

Hank continued. "That production field's a con job."

Evelyn and Val spoke simultaneously. "What production field?"

Hank looked at the two with a look of slight amusement, then replied. "Val Verde-they're conning the NCR into building it, only the Floramin won't go to the NCR-it'll go here."

Val replied first, quickly. "The Valley?"

Hank nodded. "Everything you can see, everything around us-the entire Colorado River Valley-half of the Mojave, and half of Arizona." Hank then felt around in his pockets, found the land records. "I was at the Hall of Records a few days ago-in the last three months, James Knoxville has bought 95,000 acres, Earl Masterson 224,000, Clarence Baxter 152,000 acres, and Harold Bigman Johnson 375,000 acres, just along this stretch of the Colorado alone."

Val gave a small chuckle. "Harold Bigman Johnson?" Evelyn laughed as she heard the name.

Hank didn't get it. "Know him?"

Val replied. "No, I think I would have remembered, right?" Evelyn nodded in assent.

Hank shrugged. "Yeah-they've been blowing these farmers out of here and buying their land for peanuts-have any idea what this land'll be worth with a steady Floramin supply? About seven hundred million more than they paid."

This time, Evelyn spoke. "-And Charles-he knew about it?"

Hank nodded and smiled, ruefully. "It's why he was killed-" Then he began to shift around in his seat, fumbling around for something. "-Harold Bigman Johnson-Harold Bigman Johnson-"

Hank pulled out his wallet, excitedly now, spilling its contents onto the seat. He snatched up the obituary column he'd folded up earlier in the week.

"We got it. We got it, baby."

Val and Evelyn spoke together again. "Got what?"

Hank read, proudly, like a schoolboy reading an A-grade paper to the class. "There was a memorial service at the Blue Paradise Rest Home today for Harold Bigman Johnson. He died on the 15th of this month."

Evelyn shrugged. "Is that unusual?"

Hank held up the land record sheet again. "That was a week ago. Then sometime this week he bought 375,000 acres of land. That's unusual."

* * *

The car pulled up before the elegant hacienda-style rest home, its entryway illuminated by streetlights. There was a small sign giving the name of the place in elegant neon scroll, sitting atop a manicured green lawn.

Hank got out of the car with Evelyn and Val. He offered each girl an arm, then led the three to the entrance.

They were approached by an unctuous, well-dressed man in his forties, with a flower in his buttonhole. He saw Evelyn and raised a hand in greeting.

"Hello there, I'm Mr. Astor. Can I help you folks?" As he spoke, he took in Hank's disheveled, bruised appearance.

Hank replied smoothly. "Yes, I sure hope so. It's Dad-" -Hank gestured toward his torn clothes and nose bandage, then turned towards Evelyn- "-I just can't handle him anymore, can I, sweetheart?"

Evelyn shook her head. Val fought the urge to step on Hank's foot.

The well-dressed man raised his hand to his mouth. "Oh my goodness."

Hank followed up hastily, with an apologetic tone. "Nothing to do with Dad. It's me, actually."

Val cut in. "They just don't get along very well. Granddad's an absolute angel with everyone else."

The man stammered for a moment. "Oh-well-I don't know-"

Hank covered for him. "Naturally, I want the best for him, money is no object-"

The man glanced at Evelyn's diamond earrings and wristwatch. "-Perhaps if we could meet your father-"

Hank interrupted. "There's just one question."

"Of course."

Hank dropped his voice to one barely above a whisper. "Do you accept anyone with a Great Khan ancestry?"

Evelyn and Val both looked at Hank with surprise.

The man answered, embarassed. "I'm sorry-we don't."

Hank replied smoothly, clasping his hand over the man's shoulder. "Don't be sorry, neither does Dad." Then he turned to Evelyn. "We just wanted to make sure though, didn't we, honey?" Val stepped on his toes as he used the term of endearment. Hank ignored it.

Evelyn stared back at Hank, both amused and appaled. She nodded slightly. Hank went on. "Just to be certain, I wonder if you could show us a list of your residents?"

The man's response was clipped and pointed this time. "We don't reveal the names of our guests as a matter of policy. I know you'd appreciate that if your father came to live with us."

Hank locked eyes with the man, spoke confidentially. "That's exactly what we wanted to hear."

The man relaxed. "Oh, good."

Hank spoke again. "I wonder, is it too late for us to have a look around?"

The man began to lead them into the building. "I don't think so-be happy to show you-"

Hank cut him off. "Would you mind if we took a stroll on our own?"

The man looked nervous for a moment, then stammered a reply. "Just, if you will, confine yourself to the main building-it's nearly bedtime."

Hank smiled. "We understand." Then, turning to Val, then Evelyn-"come, dearies."

The parlor was modestly decorated. Either by accident or design, the primarily octogenarian guests had segregated themselves. In one wing, the men were playing poker and dominoes-one elderly gentlemen sat at the piano, playing a Dean Domino piece.

In an adjacent parlor, several white-headed ladies worked on a quilt. Hank stopped, turned to the wall-pointing-then he said: "They're all here. Every goddamned name."

On the wall hung a posterboard, titled DAILY ACTIVITIES and divided into several columns. Atop each column was a heading-Lawn Bowling, Bridge, Fishing, Horseshoes, Barbecuing-with a list of names of the guests, entered under certain activities, for certain days.

Evelyn and Val turned to Hank. He gestured out to the retirees in both wings. "You're looking at the owners of a five million acre empire."

Val replied, astonishedly. "They can't be."

Hank shrugged. "They may not know it, but they are." Then he walked towards one of the women knitting and working on the quit. "Hello, girls."

A chorus of greetings responded. Hank continued. "Which one of you is Clarence Baxter?"

Six of the ladies immediately pointed at one of the women sitting in their midst. She looked up bashfully and nodded her head.

"Are you Clarence?"

"Yes." Her voice was kindly, but slightly slurred, senile.

Hank smiled. "I've been wanting to meet you."

She blushed. "Why?"

Hank hesitated, then gently delivered the next question. "Did you know that you're a very wealthy woman?"

The woman smiled, looked down, and returned to her stitching. "I'm not."

"Well you own a lot of land."

The woman looked back up, shook her head. "Not anymore." Then a sorrowful smile. "Oh some time ago, my late husband owned a good deal of beach property in San Francisco-but we lost it."

Hank looked at the quilt. In it was the head of a wasp-among the rest of the crazy quilt pattern. Hank pointed at it. "That's just lovely."

"Why thank you..."

He looked through the quilt for other pieces of the wasp-found a wing-and by it-the initials C.H.L. He cocked his chin toward that particular scrap of cloth. "Where did you get this material?"

The woman responded, somewhat indistinctly. "The Casa Door Hunting Lodge-"

Hank raised an eyebrow. "The Casa Door?"

The woman repeated herself, slower this time. "No-the Cazador. It's an insect. My son and grandson are members-and they take very nice care of us."

Hank smiled. "How do they do that?"

"Oh-give us things-not just some old flag like this, but-"

Hank knelt down, leaned closer. "But what?"

They were interrupted by the clipped, tense voice of the well-dressed man. "We're a sort of unofficial charity of theirs, Mr. Redstone. Would you care to come this way? Someone wants to see you."

Hank looked up, saw the man in the doorway, one hand on Evelyn's shoulder. Val was nowhere to be seen. Hank got up. "See you later." A chorus of goodbyes followed.

He and Evelyn walked towards the rest home manager, who was now standing at the front door. Also at the door was a heavily-scarred tribal, who was holding onto a handcuffed and sedated Val with his left arm. The right arm was a stump, plasma burns forming its punctuation mark.

The tribal spoke first. "Come on-I want you to meet somebody, Hank."

Hank glanced from the tribal, to the rest home manager, then back to the tribal again. "Can we leave the lady out of this?"

He pointed at Val. "Her? No, you kidding me?"

Hank snorted, gestured towards Evelyn. "I meant the redhead."

The tribal nodded, hesitantly. "Yeah, why not?"

Hank replied. "Okay, I'd like to walk her to the car."

The tribal held up an arm, blocking his path. "She knows where it is."

Evelyn spoke quickly. "I'm staying."

Hank looked at her and spoke forcefully. "Get in the car."

Evelyn began to walk, hesitantly through the doorway. The tribal made the mistake of opening up the glass door in the entryway, putting his back to Hank for a small moment. Hank closed the distance in one swift motion, pulled the tribal's leather jacket up over his head, then spun him around forwards and backwards. Dizzy and blind, the tribal danced about helplessly, .357 magnum clattering to the tile floor. Hank then grabbed the jacket and rammed the tribal's head once, twice, thrice into the glass, shattering it, then turned him around and starting ramming his head into one of the concrete arches-finally finished by clasping both his fists together and delivering a hard blow to the back of the neck. The jacket was now dripping something red. The tribal went down and did not get up.

The rest home manager screamed, then saw the gun and began to reach for it. Just before he did, Hank's foot connected with the gun barrel, sending the piece flying thirty feet down the hall. Hank fixed the manager with a murderous stare. The manager backed away, bumping into the crowd of excited ancients gathered behind him.

Hank ignored them, lifted Val over his shoulder, then turned and walked into the gravel parking lot. As he did, he noticed two more men-plainclothes, nervous movements-coming straight for him. Hank stopped. The two men fanned out and continued closer. Hank began to back up.

Suddenly a pair of headlights appeared between the men. In a moment, Evelyn's car was headed across the lawn directly at them, accelerating as it got near. The two plainclothes men looked at each other in disbelief, then dove for safety. The car skidded to a stop, fishtailing a little on the grass.

Evelyn opened the passenger door. "Get in."

Hank threw Val into the backseat, then hopped into the passenger side door. Two shots-wide misses. The screech of tires, and then they were off.

* * *

Evelyn looked straight ahead, driving. After a moment, she took one hand off the wheel and rubbed her left eye a little. Hank watched her, smiling slightly.

Over the horizon, the bright lights of New Vegas popped one by one into view. Hank sat back in the seat, glanced at Val. She looked to be sleeping soundly, just like Hank himself had been on the farmer's front porch.

Hank then glanced back at Evelyn. "So, you have a place in New Vegas?"

Evelyn laughed. "Y-yes. A few months back, Charles and I reserved the Presidential Suite at the Tops for our fifteenth anniversary."

Hank looked back down the road. The lights of the highway floated past them, dreamlike. "Fifteen years?"

Evelyn laughed, a little more nervously this time. "What?"

"Nothing, I just didn't take Charles to be a cradle robber."

Evelyn opened her mouth, as if to respond, but then closed it. Hank rolled down his window, then offered her a cigarette. She took it with haste.

Hank continued. "You know Val back there?"

Evelyn's response was clipped. "Y-yes-I-I recognized her from the pictures. So, I guess not."

"You do or you don't?"

Her voice was strained. "N-no. I mean, Charles did mention her once or twice-"

"He mentioned her? In what way?"

Evelyn fumbled for the words. "He-he said she was a friend, just that, nothing more."

Hank took out a cigarette of his own, looked at it, then lit it. "A friend, eh? So you knew about the affair beforehand?"

"Well, no, not really. I just always thought Inkay was meeting her on that basis."

Hank shrugged a little. "Sometimes I have trouble believing you, Mrs. Inkay."

"What do you mean by that?"

Hank took a puff. "I mean you say things that make me think you're pretty smart, but then you go and tell me stories that only make sense if you're really stupid."

Evelyn was silent for a moment. She threw her cigarette out the window. Then she spoke, changing the subject. "Look-there is something I should tell you. The hunting lodge the old lady mentioned-the pieces of the flag-"

Hank finished her sentence. "-The Cazador Hunting Lodge."

"Yes. It has to do with my father."

Hank shrugged, interjected flatly: "I know."

Evelyn continued: "He owns it." Then she stopped, looked over at Hank. The car began to drift into the opposite lane. Hank grabbed the wheel. Evelyn's voice suddenly lost its composure. "You _know_?"

Hank looked over, not understanding her feelings. "I saw him."

Evelyn slammed on the brakes, pulled over the car on the shoulder. "You saw my fa-father? When?"

"Three days ago." Hank stubbed out the cigarette in car's ashtray, then rolled up his window.

Evelyn-panicked. "You didn't tell me."

"Well, there hasn't been a lot of time."

She leaned closer, now. "What did he say?" Then again, more insistently, chewing out each syllable: "What. Did. He. Say?"

Hank leaned back a little, made a defensive gesture. "-That you were jealous, and he was worried about what you might do."

"Do? To whom?"

Hank nodded towards the backseat. "Inkay's girlfriend, for one thing." Hank paused for a second. "He wanted to know where she was."

Evelyn leaned forward, her head briefly touching the car horn. There was a short honk, then she jerked her head back up as if zapped by live wire. "I want you to listen to me-my father is a very dangerous man. You don't know how dangerous. You don't know how crazy."

Hank's voice was flat. "Give me an example."

Evelyn didn't. "You may think you know what's going on, but you don't."

Hank resisted the urge to grin. "That's what your father said-are you telling me he's in the back of this whole thing?"

Evelyn was actually shaking now. "It's possible."

"Including the death of your husband?"

"It's possible-please don't ask me any more questions now. I'll need to take care of some business once we get to New Vegas-just wait, wait for me there-and I'll be back. I need you. Please?"

Hank blinked twice. "Maybe-" He didn't get to finish. Evelyn leaned in, too quickly for Hank to react, and swallowed his lips. Hank was reminded of how deep passion always welled up from desperation.

"Promise me. Please?"

Hank didn't answer. They sat there, still, in the darkness for what felt like a long minute. Then Evelyn restarted the engine, and they were on their way.


	8. Salt Of The Earth

**8. Salt of the Earth**

Hank awoke to an acrylic, sickly sweet smell, real close. Glancing at his watch, he noticed it was eight-thirty in the morning.

The light through the blinds was sparse. He heard muffled murmurs from the other room, two women talking. The noise seemed to be coming from Val's room. Hank inched open the door a crack, and found Evelyn braiding Val's hair, leaning over her protectively as Val sat on a stool in front of the vanity mirror. The smell came from an opened bottle of hair product on the dresser.

Hank coughed a little. Evelyn turned around with a jump, knocking the bottle onto the floor. "Oh, I didn't see you-good morning-"

Hank shrugged- "Excuse me, ladies." -Then closed the door.

Evelyn walked out first, peeked her head into Hank's bedroom. "Hank, a moment please?"

Hank leaned out of the bathroom, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. He mumbled, "Wah ish ith?"

Evelyn closed the door behind her. "Val-she doesn't know that Tom McLafferty is my father, correct?"

Hank shook his head, spat out the toothpaste.

Evelyn nodded, slowly, then smiled a little. "Good. Can we make sure it stays that way?"

Hank shrugged, gargled some water. "Sure." He then turned and wiped his mouth with a towel, flipping off the bathroom light as he stepped through the door. "Any reason?"

Evelyn smiled. Hank blinked twice. It was not the way she usually smiled-it was closer to the way her father smiled. "Oh, no reason, really-just would rather she not view me as a spoiled woman, that's all."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "She probably thinks that you think she cheated on your husband. Why do you care so much how she views you?"

Evelyn's smile disappeared. "I just do, that's all. I'm a rather... image-conscious woman. I'm sure you understand."

Hank snorted. "Well, I don't think there's much you can do to stop her from thinking you're spoiled-your husband _was_Charles Inkay. How much worse can it get if she knows your father was Tom McLafferty?"

Evelyn's voice was now cold and slightly indignant. "There's a difference between being someone's wife and being someone's daughter. I'm sure you know that, given your line of work." Then she was out the door, her heels sounding much louder than normal.

Val walked out of the room five minutes later, joining Hank and Evelyn in the living room. She was wearing a white, billowy sundress. Very un-Val-like, Hank noted.

"Do I look pretty?" Her voice seemed to have gone up an octave since last night.

Hank nodded. "Yeah."

Val pouted. "Aw, is that it? Not even a single superlative or adjective?"

Evelyn chimed in. "Valeria. It's rude to speak that way to-" She paused, then looked at Hank, composed herself, and said nothing.

Hank smiled a bit. Then he rubbed his stomach. "I know a good breakfast joint around here-best wasteland omelettes I've ever had. Let's check it out."

Evelyn shook her head. "I have some affairs to get in order. Could you look after Val for the next few hours?"

Hank shrugged. "Why not?" Evelyn disappeared into her room.

They were interrupted by a buzz from the intercom. Val spoke up. "Yes? Who is it?"

It was the Courier's aide. His voice was pubescent, cracked a little. "The Junior Senator would like to see you-"

Hank shrugged. "Guess the omelette'll have to wait."

* * *

The Courier had sent a pair of securitrons to escort them, along with three pomaded toughs from the Kings. Val, first. "Why all the security?"

One of the toughs responded. He was short for a King. "Well, we heard about you folks getting shot up by nearly everyone." He gestured toward Hank's leg. "Seems like you might need it."

"But we're only walking from the Tops-" she gestured across the street "-to the Lucky 38."

The King shrugged. "Courier's orders. Maybe he thinks the someone on the Strip might try to whack ya?" Then he winked at Val, who shrugged in response.

They followed the aide, the two bots, and the toughs through the Lucky 38 lobby. Hank noted that they were not heading to the Penthouse. Instead, they stopped at a door marked "FREIGHT ELEVATOR-STAFF ONLY". The aide pressed the down button. "We'll see you when you come back up." Then the bots, toughs, and the aide peeled off and headed back to the main casino floor.

When Hank and Val stepped off the elevator, they found themselves looking a cavernous space, machinery jutting and twisting from every angle. Securitrons, Gutsies, and Sentry Bots hung from the ceiling and walls, dormant. Behind them lay crowded storage racks, overflowing with missiles, 5mm caseless, and energy cells.

The Courier walked up, with a toddler in tow. The physical resemblance was striking. Hank realized this was his son.

"So you finally got here." Then he turned to Val. "And my goodness. You could charm the rattle off a nightstalker right now, with the way you look."

Val blushed, turned to Hank. "See? Some men know how to compliment a lady."

Hank smiled, nodded, then cocked his head toward the boy. "Didn't know it was 'Take Your Kid To Work' Day."

"Well, I figured this might be a bit more educational than having him watch his dad drink scotch and throw things."

Hank laughed. "All right. Su casa, padrone."

"Glad to know we're on the same page." A pause. "Before we begin, I'd just like to apologize for the last meeting by giving you your robot back." He held a transparent plastic envelope filled with computer chips. "These are the data and processing cores. Here's a tracking unit. Managed to salvage 'em. Apologies in advance if you needed to pick him up whole."

Val looked concerned. Hank shrugged. "How do I use him now?"

"Afraid I don't know. I heard you guys left the 'bot behind, so I had one of the techs help me take him apart. But he's all there, completely intact-well, everything except a voice chip, anyhow."

Hank nodded. "Thanks." Then, turning to Val. "Can you take care of this?" She nodded, placing the chips in her purse.

Then the Courier held out his hand for Val. She took it, sticking her tongue out slightly at Hank. "Come, I brought you here to take a look at something. Might help you solve your Floramin mystery."

The Courier led them to into a metal storage container, twenty-by-sixty feet, abutting two parked Vertibirds. Inside was a large tabletop map of the Mojave, a couch, and a Pre-War military-style aluminum desk with a terminal sitting atop it. The lights were already on. A fist-sized pile of cigarettes smoldered lazily in the ashtray. The Courier held up his son, let him take a good look at the map, then sat him down on a couch along one wall.

On the map, he'd stuck in red, green, and blue pins, and drawn red-hashmarked circles on the paper, covering some of the larger clusters of pins. New Vegas was a tourist souvenir, a bronze Lucky 38 tower held down by superglue. Running out from the tower was a spiderweb of yellow strings, threading between pins and terminating at each large red circle. Hank realized that the pins matched up, vaguely, with what he'd seen on Inkay's pip-boy.

Val spoke first. "What's this?"

The Courier was silent for a moment. Then he spoke, casually. "A map of the Mojave... three months from now."

"What do you mean?"

The Courier held up a red pin. "This-this represents a battalion-sized encampment of Legion remnants." He set it down, picked up a blue pin. "This is a battalion of NCR forces."

He continued. "The yellow string marks my trips out into the wasteland. I've been surveying the distribution of forces. The NCR is getting ready to invade Arizona."

Hank picked up a green pin. "What about this?"

The Courier took a deep breath. "This represents a detachment of the NCR Strategic Rocketry Corps." Then he pointed at one of the hand-drawn circles around Flagstaff. "And the red hash-marks are their target bombardment areas."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "Nukes? The NCR is thinking of nuking Arizona?"

The Courier shrugged. "If Oliver gets his way-which, given how most people think McLafferty is Deathclaw spawn, is probable-then yes. They've been deploying nuclear rockets through the Long 15 for months now." He paused. "You might have even passed a missile truck or two on your way up here."

Hank shook his head. "I don't see how this is related to-" The Courier threw him a wry grin. Then Hank caught himself, sat down heavily. "I don't believe it-could it be-" He dug around furiously in his pockets, before finding the list of land purchases again.

"Give me something to write with. Any color but red." The Courier fished him a purple crayon from a small tray under one corner of the map.

Hank laid out the Colorado River land records and began to draw. A line here, a line there, some shading-laying out all the purchases made in the Valley past three months. Val watched, and as Hank got close to finishing, she raised an eyebrow in confusion.

Hank sat down, in shock. The Courier lit a cigarette. "Those the new owners?" Hank nodded. "As I thought." Then he looked at his son, put the cigarette out with a slight expression of guilt.

Val spoke up. "Why is... why do all the shaded areas overlap? I mean, wouldn't they not want their land purchases to get hit by nuclear warheads?"

Hank shook his head. "Val-remember what Cartius said about how Floramin is produced?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember how he said that Floramin feeds off radiation?"

Val's reply was a bit more hesitant this time. "...yes?"

"Do you get it now?"

Val turned pale, began to shake. "My god..."

The Courier spoke up. "The NCR's stretched pretty thin-just like six years ago. Our treaty with them made them responsible for guarding the border from the Grand Canyon all the way up to New Canaan." He pointed at a few spots where lonely blue pins stood guard facing a sea of red. "They don't have enough conventional firepower to defend what they've got, much less invade the rest of Arizona. But the Legion doesn't have any way to deal with nukes or chemicals. Oliver knows this, and won't hesitate to exploit it."

Hank spoke up. "And those bastards know Oliver knows... and they aren't hesitating to exploit that."

Val was still shaking. "Christ, they're going to irradiate everything downstream of Hoover Dam."

Hank finished her thought. "Yep. That bond issue-they aren't going to use Val Verde for production at all. It's just a starter batch-for the entire Colorado River Valley."

Val recovered a bit. "But what about Arizona? They can't buy any Legion-owned land."

The Courier smiled. "Two words. Bearclaw bonds. Several of the big merchant houses have been buying those up like crazy-open purchases, ostensibly to improve their public image. But the truth is, a clause in the bill lets the largest bondholders get first look at buying any new Arizona territory."

Hank nodded. "And no one would want to touch radioactive land, anyhow, so they'd have it easy buying it all up."

The Courier nodded back. "Sad, but true." Then he sat down on the couch next to Hank, tousled his son's hair a bit. "What I really feel bad about-what I really regret-is that I could have stopped this. Could have wrecked those warheads in the Divide." He looked down, then at his son, who was looking up at him with big, confused eyes. "Instead, I left a lot of them intact-let the NCR take them... and form the very arm of service that unleashed the Great War in the first place."

Val leaned over, placed a hand on the senator's shoulder. "It's not your fault." She took out a small bag of chocolates. The Courier passed them to his son. "No one could have predicted this. Not even you."

The Courier shrugged. "I guess it doesn't matter now. Do you have any idea who might be behind this?"

"The Shi? Crimson? Gun Runners? Van Graffs? Hell, even New Reno?" Hank shook his head. "Could be any of them, or all of them. Everybody but the Brotherhood, really."

The Courier shook his head. "See, this is why I don't take sides." His son offered him a piece of chocolate. He took it, smiled, patted him on the head. "Eventually you get wrapped up in something like this, and then... well, you don't have much of a choice."

Hank nodded, paused, then asked a question. "How'd you know which areas the missiles are targeting?"

"Not everyone in the NCR is as enthusiastic about going nuclear as Oliver is."

Hank immediately responded, "Hsu?"

The Courier nodded, then looked away, an expression of pain crossing his face. "His Vertibird crashed shortly before you guys showed up." A pause. "Whoever is behind this... they offed the four-star general running the Mojave Occupation Forces as casually as clipping their own toenails."

Val spoke up. "You're telling us to be careful."

"Something like that."

She continued, pointing at Hank's leg. "I think we know that already."

The Courier paused for a second. "If you need any assistance out there, let me know-I might be able to spare a squad or two of 'bots-but not yours truly."

Hank asked, flatly. "Where are you going?"

The Courier looked at his son for a long moment, then looked up again. "North. New Canaan, Zion. Graham says it'll be safe. Gonna set Freeside automated defenses on high alert; probably tell Nipton, Novac, and Boulder City to double their patrols but sit tight."

A pause. Then Val's expression turned mischevous. Hank looked at her. "What about this is so funny?"

She turned to the Courier. "Pardon me for asking, but wouldn't you say you're pretty popular in the NCR?"

The Courier laughed-genuinely at first, but quickly turning bitter. "Yeah-handing over the Mojave on a silver platter does make one quite popular in the Core Regions, I'll admit."

"Couldn't you just run for President against Oliver?"

The Courier looked at Hank, who looked back-then snorted. "Miss, just because I'm good at making girls feel nice and pretty doesn't mean I'd make a good politician." He stared for a moment at a faded United Mojave flag hanging on the wall. "Politicians take-all the time-for themselves, and for their country. That doesn't come easy to me."

Hank spoke this time. "All the more reason why you should take the oath, instead of Oliver."

The Courier chuckled, a little less bitterly now. "I think this meeting is over now. You got what you came for." Then, while looking at his son: "Good luck."

* * *

They arrived back in the Tops presidential suite in time for lunch. Evelyn's butler had shown up sometime during the morning, and was busy ordering around the hotel staff through the intercom when Hank and Val stepped through the door.

Hank sat down at the table, picked up the menu, and broke into a grin, smacking his lips. He was hungry, and it showed. Val joined next to him. Evelyn herself took a little bit longer to appear. As she walked out of the hallway, Val leaned over quite purposefully and gave Hank a hard kiss on the cheek. Evelyn stopped a second and nearly knocked over a vase. Val looked at Evelyn and smiled. Evelyn chuckled a little, then smiled and sat across from them. She spoke up.

"Your car is fixed. A ghoul named Tejada did an excellent job on it, so I took the liberty of giving him five hundred extra caps."

Hank replied. "Thanks. Did you go and pick it up yourself?"

Evelyn shook her head. "Oh-no, no. I had Neville do it. He checked the work." She hesitated. "He's-much more mechanically astute than I am."

The butler finished chatting on the intercom and turned to the three diners. "Lunch will begin in three minutes. We will begin with a wasteland charcuterie."

Three minutes later, Hank, Val, and Evelyn found themselves staring at a tray filled with pickled cazador eggs, brahmin cheeses, thinly sliced mole rat sausage, and a lakelurk quiche sitting in a bowl made out of a deathclaw eggshell. Hank and Val wolfed it down-Evelyn ate slowly and measuredly. As soon as they were done, the butler spoke again, announcing a desert salad for the primo course. Hank and Val wolfed that down, too. Then the secondo-a brahmin wellington. The chef came out with the dish, briefly igniting each pastry with a small splash of brandy. Val's eyes lit up.

"Thanks, Mrs. Inkay. This is-this is absolutely amazing. I've never had food this good before."

Evelyn smiled, somewhat enigmatically. "I'm so glad to see that you like it, dear." Then she poured three glasses of deep red wine, pushing two across the white linen tablecloth. Turning to Hank, she asked, "How was your meeting with the Senator? Was he able to help?"

Hank picked up a glass, made a small toasting gesture, then took a deep pull. He put the glass down and frowned a little. "He gave us some bad news."

Evelyn returned the toast, then turned to Val and made a similar gesture. Val returned it and took a sip. "Bad news? How bad?"

Val spoke. "The NCR is planning to invade Arizona, and they're going to use nuclear weapons to do so."

Evelyn jumped, slightly. "Oh dear. Really. That's... that's terrible. Who would authorize such a thing?"

Hank stuck a fork into his brahmin wellington. "Lee Oliver, for one. Although going by the looks of it, its likely that your-I mean, Tom McLafferty is involved, too."

Evelyn blinked. "But my husband-" -Val looked awkwardly at her- "-used to tell me that McLafferty and Oliver loathed each other. How could they be working together?"

Val shrugged. "Well, sometimes, when a Brahmin bull is lonely enough, it'll even try to fuck a Deathclaw."

Hank laughed. Evelyn threw Val a glare. "Young lady, you watch your-" Then she looked at Val and Hank, who were both staring at her with puzzled looks. Evelyn composed herself, then drank the rest of her glass as if nothing had happened.

They finished the rest of the secondo in an awkward silence. Dessert arrived, a fourteen-inch cheesecake topped with rings of chocolates, candied fruit, and pinyon nuts. In the center was a small candle and the words "Happy Birthday Valeria" written in caramel.

Evelyn smiled at Val, slightly. "A week early, but nonetheless worth celebrating."

Val sat, unblinking. So did Hank. They spoke in unison. "How did you know?"

Evelyn's voice was steady. "Charles told me." Then, she motioned to the butler. "Go on, serve them the cake. And the digestif." The digestif was a mutfruit grappa, powerful and choking. Val almost didn't want to drink it, but Evelyn insisted that she did. "It's good for you-after such a heavy meal, it's important get some rest."

Val choked back tears. "But-but Hank and I-we have to hurry up and figure out-" She looked over at Hank, who had chugged all of his digestif and was now happily snoozing in his chair.

Evelyn repeated herself, in a strangely soothing tone. "Rest, Valeria. Rest is important."

For some reason, Val's eyes wanted to close. She fought for a few seconds, then gave up and slumped over.

* * *

When Hank woke up, Evelyn and Val were gone.

"Probably went shopping," he muttered. He looked through his backpack, found enough NCR cash for five hundred casino chips, and went to his room for a quick shower and change.

Afterwards, as he stepped out of his room, he noticed Evelyn's room was empty, devoid of luggage. Hank wrinkled an eyebrow. She didn't say she was leaving, he thought. Then he checked Val's room. It was still full-Val's things were strewn across the bed. The only things that were organized were her plasma gun and gauss rifle, neatly diassembled atop her makeup counter.

"Weird."

Hank took the elevator into the garage. Evelyn's car was gone. The Shi off-roader was still there, though. Hank looked inside. Nothing seemed amiss. He reached into his suit pocket for the keys, and then-nothing. They were gone.

Hank stood there, dumbly. It wouldn't have been the first time a client had screwed him over, but somehow, he wanted Evelyn to be different. Too late for that.

Hank went back up to Val's room. No sign of a struggle. He looked at the dining table. It had been cleared off, wiped down so hard Hank could see streaks in the glass. Hank thought through the lunch. Evelyn had eaten everything with them, except for the digestif. It was obvious, now. He shook his head. "Why?"

The detective wandered around the suite for a while, wrapping his arms around himself in frustration. "If only that robot were around, he'd be able to tell me..." His face suddenly lit up. Hank rushed into Val's room, digging around everywhere, but did not find her purse, or the bag of Cartius' remains. He gave a small leap of joy.

Hank phoned the penthouse of the Lucky 38. A woman answered.

"Hi there, we're in the middle of dinner-could you call back another time?"

"I'm sorry, this is urgent. I need to talk to Six. Tell him Hank is calling."

The woman put down the reciever and yelled something indistinct. Six picked up the receiver. "Hello? Cass just said you called. What is it?"

"Listen-is there any way your techs could track the robot for me?"

"...er, yeah, sure. Why, though?"

Hank loosened his necktie a little. "Someone kidnapped Val. I have no idea where they went. But the tracking device she was holding onto might."

A pause.

"Alright, I'll do it. You owe me though." Then a click.

Hank waited around the phone for three hours, packing Val's things to pass the time. When the call finally came, it was close to midnight.

"Yeah?"

It was the aide. "Your bird's flown all the way back home."

"Shady Sands?"

"You got it. Palatine Hill."

"Thanks a ton."

"Don't sweat it. Just do me a favor and check out Mick and Ralph's sometime, would you?" Then a click.

* * *

Hank had hotwired the Shi off-roader. He'd driven for twelve hours straight. He hadn't slept for nearly twenty. His eyes had fixed on the horizon so long they'd begun to hurt. It was almost like Forlorn Hope again.

Hank cruised the edges of the slum for a while, looking for Evelyn's car. It wasn't hard to spot-a cream-colored Chryslux in the largest slum in all of the NCR. He finally found it, parked at a messy angle in front of an oddly familiar motel.

Palatine Hill Suites.

Hank climbed onto the roof, then hung himself over the edge. Past the window, he could see Evelyn's Vault City butler rush through the living room of the dingy suite. After about ten seconds, he re-emerged carrying a tray with a glass and pitcher on it.

Hank heard some agitated chatter from within the house. Then he rolled ten feet on the roof, drooped over the edge and looked through the next set of windows. It was a bedroom. Hank could see the butler again. Evelyn was pacing back and forth in and out of his line of vision. After a moment, Hank noticed someone lying on the bed-it was Val. She was asleep. Hank saw Evelyn place some white powder into the water, then leave the glass out on the nightstand, obviously for Val to drink. Then Evelyn made for the door.

Hank launched himself over the edge, doing a backflip and landing on his feet. Pain shot up through his injured leg, but he managed to limp to the cover of a stairwell. Then he hurried toward Evelyn's car.

Evelyn opened the door and sat down, agitated, nervous. It took her two full seconds to see Hank sitting in the passenger seat.

"Okay, gimme the keys. And Val."

Evelyn-stunned, furious. "You bastard."

Hank's tone became dry, with a tinge of bitterness. "-It's either that, or you drive yourself to the police..."

"The police?"

"C'mon, Mrs. Inkay-you've got your husband's girlfriend tied up in there!"

Evelyn blurted out the next phrase. "She's not tied up!"

"You know what I mean. You kidnapped her-and you're keeping her there against her will."

Evelyn was distraught. "I am not!"

"Then let's go talk to her." Hank made a motion for to open the passenger-side door.

Evelyn grabbed his arm, nearly screaming: "No!" Her grip was so strong, it actually tore Hank's jacket. Hank shrugged, closed the door. Evelyn continued. "She's... too upset."

"About what?"

"About... about..."

"You can cut the crap, Mrs. Inkay. It doesn't look like she's upset. It looks like you think she knows about Charles' death-knows more than you want her to tell."

Evelyn's voice went up an octave. "You're insane-"

Hank cut her off. "-Just tell me the truth-I'm not the police. I don't care what you've done. I'm not going to hurt you-but one way or another, I'm going to know."

Evelyn's voice dropped. She began to sob, quietly. "You won't go to the police if I tell you?"

Hank shrugged. "I will if you don't."

A long pause. Evelyn's head sank onto the steering wheel, her hair covering her face.

"She's my sister."

Evelyn was breathing very deeply now-not crying, but the kind of deep breathing Hank recalled coming from soldiers who'd finally succumbed to combat psychosis.

Hank put an arm around her shoulder. "Take it easy... if she's your sister, she's your sister... why all the secrecy?"

Evelyn lifted her head and looked up at him. She saw that he was genuinely puzzled. It made her cry even more. "I can't..."

Hank held her for a moment, then let go. "Because of Charles? Because she was seeing your husband? Was that it?" Hank thumped the passenger side window nervously with his fingers. "For Gods' sake, say something. Was that it?"

Evelyn-hesitantly nodding. Hank sighed. Evelyn began quietly murmuring, almost babbling. "I would never ever harmed Charles. I loved him more than my own fa-family. He was the most gentle, decent man imaginable... and he put up with more from me than you'll ever know... I just wanted him to be happy..."

Hank handed her a tissue. She blew her nose. Hank spoke. "-Can I take my keys, and Val?"

Evelyn looked up, eyes watery. "Could-could you come with me?"

Hank shook his head. "Don't worry, I'm not telling anybody about this. And I'll take good care of your sister."

Evelyn looked straight into Hank's eyes for a long moment. "I know you will." Then Evelyn reached over, took Hank's hand in her own. "But that's... that's not what I meant."

There was a long moment of silence. Hank looked at his own reflection in the rear-view mirror-nose bandage, grimy face, haggard eyes, then over to her. Her normally vibrant, movie-star red hair was a mess, covering half her face. Hank finally spoke. "Yeah, well... we're both very tired, Mrs. Inkay. I'll need a nap. Good afternoon."

Hank got out and slammed the car door. He sat in the off-roader until he saw Evelyn drive off ten minutes later. Then he headed into the motel.


	9. Capable Of Anything

**9. Capable Of Anything**

Hank walked in. Val was asleep-shallow breathing. Neville the Butler was still standing by the bedroom rocking chair, looking guilty. Hank ignored him.

"Val, baby-wake up."

She rolled over, eyes blinking four times in a quick sequence, like a rapid-fire camera wheel. "Wh-where am I?"

"In Palatine Hill Suites."

"Huh? How'd I get here?"

Hank sat down by the bed. "Evelyn drugged us both at lunch, then drove you all the way back here."

Val sat bolt upright. "What?"

Hank shrugged. "Yeah. Said she was your sister, too. You alright?"

Val nodded, then reached over, clasping Hank firmly on the shoulders, shaking him slightly. "And you believed her?"

Hank moved her hands off his shoulders, shrugged. "Not really." Then he traced a finger down Val's cheeks, from her earlobe to her chin. "Though you do kind of resemble each other, now that I think about it."

Val made a pouting face. "She's got fourteen years on me, Hank."

Hank smiled. "Tom McLafferty's got twenty-six on me, but you still said I looked like him." Val smiled back. Then she looked at something behind Hank, her smile disappearing. Hank turned around. The butler was looking at both of them, face pale.

Val glanced at Hank. "Why is he still here?"

Hank shrugged, stood up, approached the man. "She left you here?"

He nodded, then: "I'm deeply sorry about what happened."

Hank pursed his lips, then casually unholstered the silenced auto pistol in his jacket and poked it into the Vault City man's kidneys, prodding him into the next room. Hank's tone, though, was conversational. "Don't be sorry. We all gotta pay the bills." Then he looked at Val. "At least she's okay, though-" -reached into a coat pocket, offered a Desert Ranger filter- "-Lighten up."

The butler's hands were shaking, so Hank lit it for him, three fingers smoothly flicking out the engraved silver lighter. He took a long, deep drag, then sat down on the dingy couch. Hank took a seat on the recliner across from him, keeping the pistol rested on one thigh, but still pointed at the butler's abdomen. The two looked at each other for a moment. Hank lit one for himself, then spoke. "You look like a clean-cut, honest guy. How did Mrs. Inkay actually get you to do it?"

The butler walked to Val's bedroom door, closed it. Then he returned. His hands were still shaking. "She said... she told me that was her daughter."

Hank leaned forward, cigarette still clutched between his teeth. A snowflake of ash drifted off the lit end. "What?"

"Evelyn..." The butler sighed, smoke billowing out of his nostrils. "She was young. She didn't know how to take care of... Valeria, so she left her behind."

"In Arizona."

"Yes-and Charles found her from the genetic records in the Von Metzger incident-raised her-"

Hank shook his head. "And didn't tell Mrs. Inkay?"

The butler shook his head. "Evelyn... she didn't know until the photos came out, she said-"

Hank cut him off. "-and you believed that?"

The butler nodded, slowly, then exhaled. The smoke hung in the air for a long moment. Then he spoke up again. "I was reuniting a mother and daughter-isn't that a good thing?"

"Not if you drug one of them, it's not." Hank smiled a little, let the silenced .45's point of aim drift off a bit. The butler noticed, but said nothing. Hank continued. "Why couldn't Mrs. Inkay just introduce herself to Val?"

The butler shook his head, twitchingly. "She didn't want-want her daughter to know."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "Know what? That she was her mother?"

The butler nodded, slowly this time. A pause. Hank blinked twice, stubbed out the filtered remains in the ashtray, then spoke. "Did Mrs. Inkay tell you who the father was?"

The butler shook his head, slowly. "No." He leaned closer, rubbing his fingers gingerly across his immaculately shaved jaw. "Actually, I asked Evelyn. She slapped me a few times across the face and then told me to get out of her sight." Then he gave a painful wince, as the tube of ash on his cigarette fell onto the back of his hand.

A long, nervous moment.

"Well, I still don't believe you." Hank holstered the pistol. "But I'm not going to hurt you." Then he reached into a pocket, pulled out twenty caps machine-wrapped with tissue paper. "These'll get you home, as long as the cabdriver doesn't give you the runaround."

The butler nodded, breathed out a few thank yous and goodbyes, then scurried out the door. Hank lit another filter.

* * *

When Hank walked back into the room, Val was asleep again. The glass of drugged water was half-empty. Hank shrugged. "Woops." Then he walked up to her and covered her with the blanket.

He sat on the bed for a while, just looking at her chest rise and fall in even intervals. He began to lie down next to her, before suddenly getting up and sitting down at the rocking chair in the corner.

Hank watched her sleep for an hour, then began to close his own eyes as well. Val began to mumble something in her sleep. "Don't-don't take her away-don't take her away from me-" Hank sat bolt upright. Evelyn. Though his legs were weak and his head was pounding, he needed to know. The keys jangled in his pocket as Hank made for the door.

Hank checked the handle one last time. He'd rigged one of the frag grenades from his duffel bag in the off-roader to explode if someone even inched the door open from the outside. Then he gingerly closed the door, hearing the click as the grenade was armed.

After arriving at the Inkay manor, Hank peeked in the garage. Evelyn's car was gone, replaced by a small flatbed tricycle loaded down with luggage.

Hank hurried along the pathway and up to the house. He rang twice, counted to three, then tried the knob. It was locked. He waited another five seconds, then reached into his pocket, pulling out his cigarette case-opened it, dumped out four Desert Ranger filters and a lockpick into his palm. Hank looked around, made sure no one was watching-then started to fool with the lock.

Then, a maid abruptly opened the door, staring in some surprise at Hank.

Hank pushed past her. "Where's Mrs. Inkay?"

She was agitated, Hank could tell that much. "She's not home."

Hank looked past the maid to the center of the living room-saw luggage packed and neatly piiled. The maid began throwing covers over some of the furniture. Hank gestured toward the setup. "She going someplace?"

The maid repeated herself, loudly, out of nervousness. "She's not home!"

Hank nodded, kept walking through to the veranda. The ghoul was working by the pond-spotted Hank, half-bowed, nodded, and smiled. Hank tipped his hat in response. The ghoul pointed at the water again. Hank smiled, imitating the lisp: "-Pat fur crash." Then he turned and began to walk into the house again.

The gardener broke into a floppy grin, nodded again. "Oh yesh, pat fur crash." He pointed to the newly mown lawn. "Shalt water, very pat fur crash."

Hank stopped mid-stride, turned back around. "Shalt water? You mean salt water?"

The ghoul nodded vigorously, holding up a clump of grass that had been killed by the salt. "Yup, shuper bad."

Hank moved to the pond. He knelt. Clinging to the edge of it, he saw a mutant starfish. It had one leg missing. The sixth point on the star was just beginning to grow back. Touching the water, tasting it-Hank licked his lips, then spotted something glinting in the bottom of the pond. "What's that... down there?"

The gardener peered into the pond. Hank continued pointing. "Right... there."

The gardener spotted it. He rolled up his trousers, got in the pond, and reached into the bottom, his chin actually touching the water. He missed the object on the first try. Then he grasped it, lifting it out of the water.

It was a pair of glasses, horn-rimmed, warped. The ghoul poked his finger through the frame, where one lens had been half-shattered. The ghoul looked surprised and handed them to Hank, who held them up, peering at the refraction of light through them. The remaining lens was heavily bifocal, the glass seeming to bend the sun.

Then Hank heard the front door slam, followed by the quick, nervous clattering footsteps-Evelyn; only she had the practice to actually walk like that in heels. Hank quickly wrapped the glasses in his handkerchief, then slipped it into his pocket.

The footsteps stopped. Hank turned around and waved at her. Evelyn gripped one of the patio pillars, nearly falling backwards in shock.

She stammered out a line, quickly. "H-how are you? I was calling you."

Hank set the glasses, still wrapped in cloth, on the glass table where they'd had tea a week ago. "-Yeah? Must have missed it."

Evelyn pulled out a chair for Hank. He remained standing. Then she sat down at the table. Her face was still wearing that nervous, but polite expression. "Did you get some sleep?"

"A little."

"Did you have lunch? Neville will fix you something-"

Hank cut her off. "-Going someplace?"

"Yes, I've got a 5:30 train to catch, why?"

Hank didn't answer-went to the phone by the french doors, dialed.

"H. H. Redstone for Lieutenant Corvus."

Evelyn's voice went up a notch. "What are you doing? What's wrong? I told you I've got a 5:30-"

Hank exploded. "You're going to miss your train!" Then, into the phone. "Drew, meet me at 3913 West Bighorner Street-it's on the hill above Ranger's Point... yeah, soon as you can."

Evelyn had stood up. She stamped her feet a little. "What-what did you do that for?"

Hank shrugged. "You know any good criminal lawyers?"

Evelyn replied, puzzled. "...No..."

Hank sat down, smiled. "Don't worry-I can recommend a couple. They're expensive, but you can afford it."

Evelyn replied evenly, but with great anger: "What the hell is this all about?"

Hank looked at her-then unfolded the handkerchief on the patio table, revealing the bifocal glasses, one lens still intact. Evelyn stared dumbly at them.

Hank gestured to the pond. "I found these in your backyard-in your fish pond. They belonged to your husband, didn't they?" Then, louder. "Didn't they?"

Evelyn sat down, stammering. "I don't know. I mean yes, probably-"

Hank slapped the table. "-Yes, yes positively! That's where he was drowned."

Evelyn nearly jumped out of the chair. Hank went on. "There's no time for you to be shocked by the truth, Mrs. Inkay. The coroner's report proves he was killed in salt water. Just take my word for it, okay? Now I want to know how it happened and why. And I want to have a story before Drew Corvus gets here because I want to hang on to my license."

Evelyn stood, up, began to back away from the patio table, trembling. "-I don't know what you're talking about. This is the most insane... the craziest thing I ever..."

Hank stood up, pounded the wall. "Stop it! I'll make it easy-you saw the pictures, you were jealous, you fought, he fell, hit his head-it was an accident-but Val is a witness. You've had to pay her off. You don't have the stomach to harm her, but you've got the money to shut her up. Yes or no?"

"...No..."

"Then who is Val? And don't give me that crap about her being your sister. You don't have a sister."

Evelyn was shaking now. She braced herself against the table, then stammered: "I'll tell you the truth..."

Hank stared at her, hard. "Good. So what's the truth?"

"She's my daughter."

Hank exploded, backhanding her across the face and knocking her to ground. "I said the truth!"

Evelyn sat on the ground, sobbing. "-She's my sister-"

Hank slapped her again. Evelyn kept sobbing, mumbling. "-She's my daughter-"

Another slap. "-My sister." And another. "-My daughter, my sister-"

Evelyn suddenly screamed, then: "She's my sister and my daughter!"

Hank blinked a little, confused. Evelyn looked up at him, her face locked in a rictus of shame and trauma. "-My father and I-" She choked back a sob. "-Understand? Or is it too tough for you, detective?"

Hank sat down, not on the chair, but on the concrete, next to Evelyn-literally and figuratively floored. He responded, quietly, guiltily. "He raped you?" Evelyn didn't respond. Hank went on. "Then what happened?"

A sob. "I ran away."

Hank spoke. "To Arizona."

She nodded, then went on. "Charles came and... took care of me. Found a family to adopt her. I was too young... I was fourteen. I wanted to... but... I couldn't. Then..."

Hank reached in a pocket for a piece of chocolate, then realized it was woefully inadequate. Evelyn went on. "Then he found her... told me about her... raised her... on my behalf. Now I want to find somewhere safe... To take care of her..."

"Well you can't go by train, Corvus will be looking for you everywhere."

Evelyn looked down, stammered. "Well, how-how about a plane?"

"No-that's worse." Hank turned, stared at the luggage for a moment. "You better just get out of here. Leave all this stuff here."

Through a corner of his eye, Hank saw Neville poke his head out into the doorway. Hank spoke, to Evelyn. "Where does Neville live? Get the exact address." Then he threaded an arm under hers and lifted her up.

As Evelyn began to slowly step into the house, she turned and gestured towards the glasses, almost as an afterthought. "Those... those didn't belong to Charles."

For a moment, Hank didn't know what she was talking about. Then he followed her gaze to the glasses lying on his handkerchief. "How do you know?"

"He didn't wear bifocals." Then Evelyn disappeared into the house.

Hank picked up the glasses, staring at the lens. He was momentarily lost in them.

Evelyn reemerged from the living room. "He lives at 6512 East Bearpaw... do you know where that is?"

Hank nodded slowly. "-Sure I do. It's in Palatine."

* * *

Hank watched them leave through one of the manor windows. He'd warned Evelyn about the grenade trap, told her to knock and make sure Val opened the door from the inside. Hank then dropped the curtain and headed to the phone, dialing.

"Operator... can you reach Eddie at my office?" A click, Hank heard Eddie's mumbled hello. "Yeah, listen, pal, Drew's going to try and book me in about five minutes... relax, I'll tell ya. Wait in the office for four hours. If you don't hear from me, you come meet me at 6512 Bearpaw."

Eddie replied, quickly. "Jesus, that's in Palatine, ain't it?"

The front doorbell rang. Hank's voice got louder, faster. "I know where it is! Just do it."

Hank hung up and went to the door. He opened it. No one was there. Hank spoke, not even bothering to look around the edge of the doorframe. "Come on in, Drew-we're both too late."

Drew and Roy appeared from both sides of the door. Hank went on. "Looks like she flew the coop."

Drew nodded, grinning. "I don't suppose you have any idea where she went?"

Hank smiled back. "As a matter of fact, I do."

"Where?"

Hank pulled out his pocket notebook, began flipping through the pages. "Her maid's house. I think she knows something's up."

Drew leaned closer. "What's the maid's address?"

Hank began to fumble for a pencil. "She lives in the western hills-San Clemente-I'll write it down for you-"

Drew put a hand on his shoulder and cut him off. "No, Hank, you'll show us."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

Drew leaned back, smiled again. "Because if she's not there, you're going downtown, and you're staying there until she does show up."

Hank shrugged. "Gee, Drew, I'm doing the best I can."

Roy shoved him towards the door. "Tell us about it on the way to San Clemente."

* * *

The unmarked police car pulled up to a duplex house on a steep hill.

Drew rolled down the driver's side window, looked it up and down. "That's it?"

"-Yeah."

Drew and Roy unbuckled their seat belts. "Well, let's go."

Hank reached up from the back seat, putting a hand on Drew's shoulder. "Do me a favor, will you, Drew?"

Drew waited. Hank continued. "Let me bring her down myself... she's not armed or nothing... she won't be any problem." Hank leaned back, gave a small sigh. "I'd just like a minute alone with her... It would mean something to her..." Hank looked down, slightly embarrassed. "...And to me."

The lieutenant shook his head. For a moment, Hank thought he meant no. Then Drew spoke. "You never learn, do you, Hank?"

Hank shrugged. "I guess not."

Drew pursed his lips, looked at his watch. "-Give you three minutes."

Hank smiled- "-Thanks, Drew-" -then stepped out of the car, glancing around, and hopped up the stairs to the front porch. He looked back at the lieutenant, then turned and rang the doorbell. Hank waited. It openend, revealing a strangely familiar ghoulette. Her arm was in a cast.

"...Yes?"

Hank looked past her and saw Pedro, the ghoul hunter who owed him money. He was sitting at the dinner table with two other ghouls and a supermutant. Pedro looked up in surprise. "Mr. Redstone! Come in, come in."

Hank entered. The ghoulette closed the door. Pedro rose and came over to him, greeting him happily. "Gee, this is a surprise, Mr. Redstone."

"Call me Hank. How is everything?"

Pedro smiled a bit. "Just sitting down to supper, Hank. Care to join us?"

Hank shook his head. "No thanks-"

"How about a glass of wine? Honey, this is-"

The wife crossed her arms and gave a cold response. "I know."

There was an awkward silence. Hank broke it. "Thanks just the same, Pedro. I could use a glass of water, though-come out with me to the kitchen for a second."

Pedro gave a puzzled glance, then shrugged at his flatmates. "Sure thing."

Once they were both in the kitchen, Hank gently nudged the door shut, then turned to Pedro and spoke low, almost a whisper: "Pedro, where's your truck?"

The ghoul shrugged. "In the garage."

"Where's that?"

"Off the alley, why?"

Hank leaned even closer, not minding the smell. "Could you drive me somewhere?"

"Sure, soon as we eat-"

Hank smiled a bit. "Right now, Pedro. It can't wait."

"Oh sure, boss-I'll just tell my wife-"

Hank gently tugged on his shirt, began pulling him out the back door. "-Tell her later." They headed out the back entrance and down the steps toward the alleyway garage.

Pedro pulled open the garage door, got in, started the truck, and slowly backed out. It was an old NCR deuce-and-a-half, the faded two-headed bear still visible on the driver's side door. Hank hopped in the passenger seat. They took off. At the edge of the alley, Hank looked in the rearview mirror, saw Drew and Roy getting out of their car, moving towards the duplex. Hank slipped down a little further in his seat, and put his head in Pedro's lap, gagging slightly at the smell but holding it in check.

"Just drive slow for a block or two, will you, Pedro?"

Pedro looked down, a little puzzled by Hank's very non-smoothskin-like behavior. "What's this all about?"

"Tell you in a couple of blocks."

They drove down the hill and onto a freeway. Hank raised his head, opened the window, and took a deep breath. Then he turned to the ghoul and asked: "How much do you owe me, Pedro?"

The ghoul responded sheepishly. "Oh, gee, Mr. Redstone-we're going out tomorrow. I know you been real good about it-thanks for getting my watch back-but my grandson Phil is sick."

Hank smiled a little. "Don't sweat it. How would you like to pay me off by taking a couple of passengers to New Canaan? You'd have to leave tonight."

The ghoul scrunched his forehead. "I don't know..."

Hank turned, looked him in the eye. "I might be able to squeeze an extra seven hundred caps out of it-maybe even a thousand."

The ghoul looked over, slightly more interested. "-Plus what I owe you?"

Hank smiled, broadly, his tone magnanimous. "I'll throw that in too."

The ghoul smiled back. "Okay, you got yourself a truck."

* * *

They arrived back at Evelyn's manor. The maid was sitting on the front steps, looking worried. Upon seeing Pedro step out of the truck, she stood up in shock, before Hank walked to her and offered her the last of his chocolates.

Pedro and Hank packed quickly. In spite of slender form, Pedro proved to be stronger than Hank was, casually slinging the heavy suitcases over his shoulder like they were pieces of a recently felled deathclaw. They finished faster than Hank expected. The maid walked over and handed both of them a pitcher of iced tea, which was finished quickly-neither man bothering to pour into the glasses, instead passing the pitcher back and forth until it was done.

Hank tore Pedro a sheet of paper with directions to the butler's house. Leaning in to the ghoul's ear, Hank spoke quickly. "Tell Mrs. Inkay to wait for half an hour after you get there-then if I don't show, drive out to the Long 15."

Pedro looked a little worried. "-You sure this ok, boss?"

Hank leaned back and put on an authoritative air. "Pedro, you know how long I been in this business?"

Pedro nodded, reassured. He got in and took off.

Hank stayed by the house. He walked in, peeled off his sweat-stained outfit, and took a shower in Evelyn's bathroom, before rifling through Charles Inkay's wardrobe and putting on a fresh white shirt, gray suit, and red tie. To his surprise, they fit him well. Then he walked downstairs and calmly picked up the phone again, dialing a number from rote memory. Tom McLafferty answered. "Hello, Mr. Redstone."

"Have you got your checkbook handy, Mr. McLafferty? I've got the girl."

Tom, with slight agitation. "-You've got her? Where?"

"Do you remember the figures we discussed?"

"Of course I do. Where are you?"

"-at your daughter's house. How soon can you get here?"

"An hour... tell me, will Evelyn be there as well?"

Hank looked at his watch, then responded, coolly. "Either that or she'll be in jail."

"What are you talking about?"

Hank's voice was bone-dry. "Just bring your checkbook." Then he hung up.

An hour later, Tom McLafferty showed up in a subdued black sedan of an indistinguishable make. The windows were tinted to the point of being opaque. In spite of his cane, Tom walked quickly through the house, stopping only when he saw Hank standing by the patio table.

Tom spoke first. "There you are." Hank offered his hand in greeting. McLafferty clasped it, smiled, chillingly. "Well, you don't look any worse for the wear, Mr. Redstone. I must say." Then the smile disappeared down some dark hole. "Where's the girl?"

Hank smiled a little. "I have her."

"Is she all right?"

"She's fine."

Tom smiled again. Behind him, a muscle-bound ex-military man strode into view, but did not speak. Tom continued. "So where is she?"

Hank paused for a second. Then he looked straight into Tom's eyes and spoke, softly. "With her mother."

Tom's tone altered here. "...With her _mother_?"

Hank pulled something out of his pocket and unfolded it between his fingers. "I'd like you to look at something, Mr. McLafferty-"

"What is it?"

"An obituary column... can you read in this light?"

"Yes... I think I can manage." Tom began to fumble around for something-then pulled out a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He put them on and read.

Hank stared at the lenses, closely. They were bifocals. Tom finished reading through the obituary column and looked up. "What does this mean?"

Hank gestured toward the salt pond. "That you killed Charles Inkay-" -Hank drew out the shattered glasses from his coat pocket- "-right here, in this pond. You drowned him... and left these." Hank placed the broken pair on the table.

Tom looked at it. The man behind McLafferty moved a little closer. Hank went on. "The coroner's report showed Inkay had salt water in his lungs."

A long pause. Tom spoke first. "Charlie was always fond of tide-pools. You know what he used to say about them?"

Hank responded, dryly. "Haven't the faintest idea."

"-That's where life began again... marshes, sloughs, tide-pools... He was fascinated by how they survived the war intact. You know when we first came across the Shi botanical data, he was the one who figured out that if you mixed the Vault 22 spores with genes from the Shi plant cells and dumped it onto the radioactive desert, it would multiply until the land was permanently cleaned of radiation, instead of just covering up the effects, like most other chemicals we were using. You'd boost yields ninety or a hundred percent, instead of only twenty. He made this nation."

"-and that's what you were going to do in the Valley?"

Tom paused, looked out into the distance. "-No, Mr. Redstone. That's what I am doing with the Valley. The bond issue passes next Friday-there'll be twenty million to build a production field and drainage channels." Then, proudly: "I'm doing it."

Hank was unimpressed. "There's going to be some irate citizens when they find out they're paying blood and treasure for Floramin they're not getting."

Tom shrugged. "That's all taken care of. You see, either you bring the food to the NCR-or you bring the NCR to the food."

"How do you do that?"

"-Just irradiate and annex the rest of Arizona so the Floramin goes to the NCR after all. It's very simple."

Hank nodded. Then he tilted his head and asked, innocently: "How much are you worth?"

Tom chuckled a little, then began rummaging around for his checkbook. "I have no idea." The old man found it, took out a pen, and prepared to write down a figure. "How much do you want?"

Hank took the checkbook and set it down on the table, while picking up the glasses in one smooth motion. "I want to know what you're worth-five hundred million?"

Tom smiled, a little bashfully. "Oh my, far more than that."

Hank withdrew a cigarette, lit it. "Then why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't already afford?"

Tom drew his lips into a slight frown. "Order, Mr. Redstone-peace and order. Once all of Arizona is producing Floramin, we'll have enough for the entire continent. We can bring NCR rule to the warring tribes by simply feeding them until they depend on us to eat-we'll bring them to heel without firing a shot." Then, a pause. "Now, where's the girl? I want the only daughter I have left." Tom smiled, a little ruefully. "As you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago."

Hank, with obvious sarcasm. "Who do you blame for that? Her?"

Tom snorted, grinned, coldly. "I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Redstone, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place-" -His grin broadened into a terrifying smile- "-they're capable of... _anything._" Then he turned his head and gestured with his chin to the glasses. "Take those glasses from him, will you, Craig?"

The man stepped into view. Hank recognized him, began to shake a little. Tom spoke on. "It's really not worth it, Mr. Redstone. It's really not worth it." The man withdrew a combat knife and began to slowly stroke Hank's neck. Hank nervously watched the knife out of the corners of his eyes, dry-swallowed, then handed over the glasses.

The man kept the knife to his neck. Tom continued. "You remember Craig Boone, don't you? Picked up his pregnant wife for a thousand caps while you were a Frumentarius. Craig is going to have a wonderful time with you tonight." Then Tom leaned over and clasped a hand on Hank's shoulder, still smiling. "Unless, of course, you take us to the girl. Charles and Evelyn kept her from me for fifteen years-it's been too long, I'm too old."

Tom looked at the knife in Craig's hands, and smiled, even wider now.


End file.
